Through a glass darkly

I have a friend. Actually I have several, but the fact that this particular friend still makes me welcome is a tribute to her tolerance and 'dogginess'.

B has rescued me on many occasions, 'baby-sitting' at short and long notice; even at one point bathing my yukky Bernese puppy in her sink so that he was back to cute - and clean - by the time I collected him.(I may add here that she dried him with a hairdryer so that he looked like a tri-colour puffball, and thus gave him a complex for life - he took the Identichip injection in his stride, but threw a real wobbly when the vet produced the 'reader' which looks like.....yes, a hairdryer.) But I digress! We have also been on many lovely woodland walks together, dogs cavorting like baby elephants round us, GSD and Bernese circling and bouncing on one another, bosom pals.

Recently she took the plunge, on a sort of planned whim, and got another puppy, a beautiful flop-eared GSD, baby-bright, lively, and more than a match for her resident canine and our Tessa. I'm not sure what Rom's exact feelings were on the subject when he found it had come to stay, but after Tessa had got used to being jumped on and gnawed, she seemed to quite like it, and looked forward to our visits even more than usual.

One hot, sunny day we arrived for a visit - and a coffee - and stood chatting in the back garden, the main part of B's garden being to the front of the house, with a small conservatory built out to the side. Flower and apple tree inspection over we decided to have our drinks alfresco, and moved round the side of the house towards the patio where a rustic table and chairs awaited us. The dogs ran ahead of us through the side gate and raced round to the huge expanse of grass at the front of the house, happily chasing balls and rubber rings.

As I brought up the rear of the party it suddenly dawned on me that Tessa was nowhere in sight. I knew she had gone indoors looking for a drink of water (which, incidentally, was out on the back step, daft dog) but thought that she had come out again before B closed the back door preparatory to going round to the front. I was wrong, wasn't I?

I rounded the side of the house just in time to see our Tessa come wandering through the sitting room and out into the conservatory, a route to the front garden she had taken many times before. As if in slow motion I watched, horrified, as she suddenly spotted the other two playing on the grass. Her ears went up and forward (intelligent Bernese - who said there aren't any?) and she set off, running, for the door into the garden. A bead curtain hung over the entrance to deter flies, but she was used to this, it posed no problem for her, all you did was ignore it and it parted to let you through. Unfortunately the same did not apply to the closed conservatory doors, and as eight and a half stone of Bernese Mountain Dog hit them from inside about two feet from the floor they flew gracefully off their mountings and sailed into the garden, landing with a crash on the grass.

Everything seemed to go 'on hold', no-one moved or said anything for an interminable minute - after all what do you say when your dog demolishes a friend's house? Then the aftermath. I must say B was very restrained in the circumstances, I think I would have been far more upset than she appeared to be. The first thing was to examine the dog, but her head is quite solid, so that was OK, you know the old adage - where there's no sense there's no feeling - and there were no other injuries, also the doors had 'plastic glass' in them which was not even cracked, thank goodness (dog owners please take note!).

It did, however, give John and me an unplanned afternoon's work, putting the doors back in place. Of course, it would have been a lot easier if a certain friend had not thrown away the ball bearings she had been given to hold, thinking they were no good, but we managed to get some more at a nearby garage so that was not the problem it could have been.

All in all, the day ended better than it had seemed it would. The dog unhurt, although she deserved a headache at the very least, and the doors back on and working again.

There is a footnote to this story, however.....a couple of weeks later I was told that the puppy had done exactly the same thing, although not to such effect due to his lack of bulk. It does make you think though, doesn't it, what unexpected hazards lurk in our houses for our pets? Why not take a look around?

September 1997

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