My Dog Tulip (4 page)

Moreover, this new chapter, I gradually perceived had one considerable advantage; it shed light upon the problem that had embarrassed my public life with Tulip from the start and which Miss Canvey had deliberately left unexplored: What was my Tulip really like? How far, in my presence, would she go? It turned out that she was Miss Canvey's Tulip—that is to say “as good as gold.” This was what I had always believed, and what Miss Canvey herself had seemed to confirm when she said that she saw at a glance that Tulip was a “good girl”—leaving, however, unclear in my mind to what lengths, in Miss Canvey's philosophy, a good girl might be permitted to go in defense of her man, or her horse.

Tulip was a good girl; but as I went on hoisting her up on to one surgery table after another and supporting her there while the vets took swabs of her womb, or, opening her scissor-like jaws with their bare hands, rammed yards of stomach-pump tubing down her throat, I experienced, besides gratitude and admiration for her self-restraint, a kind of nostalgia for the past. Life was becoming dull and prosaic; something had gone out of it with dear Miss Canvey, some enrichment, some fine flavor. And this, I then knew, was the very knowledge from which, in her wisdom, she had sought to protect me: the death of the legend, the disillusionment of the heart. My Tulip: had it not now to be admitted that she had been seen through, that her bluff had been called, her stature reduced? No tigress she, but—must I face it?—an ordinary dog. Was it not even possible that, in the course of time, under these civilizing processes, she would become so tame, so characterless, so commonplace, that she might one day be found standing in a surgery alone with a thermometer in her bottom?

Tulip never let me down. She is nothing if not consistent. She knows where to draw the line, and it is always in the same place, a circle around us both. Indeed, she is a good girl, but—and this is the point—she would not care for it to be generally known. So wherever Miss Canvey may be—jogging, I hope, down some leafy lane upon a steed who will let no one mount him but herself—I would like her to know that Tulip is still the kind of good girl of whom she would approve. When, therefore, the little local boys ask me, as they often do, in their respectful and admiring way, though mistaking Tulip's gender: “Does he bite, Mister?” I always return the answer which she, and Miss Canvey, would wish me to give.

[1]
“Don't let that dog near me!” shouted a tramp to me one day on Brook Green. “They ain't to be trusted!”

“You don't look particularly trustworthy yourself,” I replied, and might be thought to have hit a nail on the head, for he at once fumbled a jack-knife out of his miscellaneous garments and, opening it with some difficulty, flourished it after me.

In the Journal of General Bertrand, 
[1]
Napoleon's Grand Marshal at St. Helena, the entry occurs: “1821, April 12: At ten-thirty the Emperor passed a large and well-formed motion.” I am not greatly interested in Napoleon's motions, but I sympathize with General Bertrand nevertheless, for Tulip's cause me similar concern. Indeed, whereas the Emperor's were probably of only
a posteriori
interest to persons other than himself—that is to say during ill-health—hers require constant supervision. The reason for this is that she has two small anal glands, which Napoleon did not have. These canine glands produce a secretion which is automatically expressed by the passage of a well-formed motion. If, however, a dog is being unsuitably fed, or, from some other cause, is continually loose in its bowels, the glands become congested and are liable to form abscesses. Tulip herself, so willful over diet, developed trouble of this kind; but luckily a penicillin injection put it right. Another dog of my acquaintance had to undergo a severe anal operation from which, although he lived for some time after, he never completely recovered and died at last of a hemorrhage. When it is remembered that dogs express their emotions by moving their tails, it will be readily understood that the aftermath of such an operation must be extremely painful and the surgical wounds difficult to heal.

These prefatory remarks may help to extenuate the vulgar brawl that took place some years ago on the Embankment at Putney, which is the name of the riverside street below my flat. It was a misty September morning, and I had taken Tulip out at about 8:30 to relieve herself. This she was peacefully doing on the sidewalk beneath the plane trees, while I stood anxiously observing her nearby. She too seldom produced at this period the kind of motions that General Bertrand describes. But apart from my interest in the results, it always pleases me to see her perform this physical act. She lowers herself carefully and gradually to a tripodal attitude with her hind legs splayed and her heels as far apart as she can get them so as not to soil her fur or her feet. Her long tail, usually carried aloft in a curve, stretches rigidly out parallel with the ground; her ears lie back, her head cranes forward, and a mild, meditative look settles on her face.

While we were thus harmlessly engaged in the otherwise empty road, a cyclist shot round the corner of the Star and Garter Hotel towards us, pedaling rapidly. He was a youngish man, wearing a rather dirty raincoat. Since Tulip was safely on the sidewalk, I don't suppose I should have noticed this person at all if he had not addressed me as he flew past:

“Try taking your dog off the sidewalk to mess!”

One should not lose one's temper, I know, but the remark stung me.

“What, to be run over by you? Try minding your own business!”

“I am an' all,” he bawled over his shoulder. “What's the bleeding street for?”

“For turds like you!” I retorted.

“Bleeding dogs!” he screamed, almost falling off his bicycle in his rage and excitement as he swiveled his body round to hurl the denunciation at me.

“Arseholes!” I replied.

He made some further comment before he disappeared, wobbling into the mist, but I did not catch it. Nor could it have signified. There was no more to be said. I had had the last word.

It will be seen then that this is a subject which arouses strong passions in the human breast. And my accuser had authority on his side. It is an offense for dogs to foul the sidewalk. But only if they are on the lead and therefore (as it is quaintly phrased) under control. Multitudes of urban dogs roam the streets by themselves, lifting their legs or tails upon the man-made world as necessity or fancy takes them, and can hardly be brought to court. The answer would seem to be: Don't put your dog on the lead.

I never had a moment's doubt in this matter myself. Having spent an anxious year at the beginning of my relationship with Tulip in persuading her that the sidewalks were safer than the streets, and having fixed this prime rule of conduct firmly in her flighty head, I had no intention of confusing her with exceptions. The official notion seemed to be that one should train one's dog to squat in the gutter, but I did not need the cautionary tale told me by a sad young man in a public house to perceive the folly of that.

A model citizen, he had conscientiously taught his own animal this public-spirited practice. One day when, unobserved by him, for his attention was modestly averted, the dog was obediently crouching in the gutter of Tooting Broadway, a truck, drawing into the curb, ran over it and broke its back. That was six months ago, he said, gulping down his drink, but the creature's screams still haunted his sleep. Besides, I live and shop in the Lower Richmond Road, which with its concealing curves and flashing traffic is one of the most dangerous streets in Southwest London. Even upon the narrower stretches of its sidewalk one feels scarcely safe, for the vehicles whizz by within a foot or so of the curb. So I had already come to my own independent conclusion that the alternative to Tulip fouling the sidewalk was that she ran the risk of being killed, and that however strongly certain pedestrians and shopkeepers might hold the view that the latter would be preferable, she should never receive instructions from me to go into the street for any purpose whatever.

Nevertheless I have a considerate mind. I am able to see other people's points of view. I know that there are few things upon which it is a positive pleasure to tread. Whenever I take Tulip out, therefore, I always offer her opportunities to relieve herself in places relatively inoffensive to humanity before entering the busy streets of crowds and shops. To start with there is the Embankment, to which I have already referred. Although this is a carriageway, it is popularly used as a promenade by the people of Putney, who stroll up and down it by the river with their dogs, often on the street for the simple reason that its single footpath is discontinuous, interrupted for long stretches by boating ramps, and frequently submerged by the flooding tide. So little distinction, in fact, can be made between street and sidewalk that I consider none where Tulip is concerned. If she does not take immediate advantage of this, we dawdle on in the direction of Putney Bridge (we are generally making for a bus in the High Street) where another narrow ramp slants obliquely down into the mud of the foreshore. Here, amid the flotsam and jetsam of wood, cork, bottles, old tin cans, french letters, and the swollen bodies of drowned cats, dogs and birds left by the tide, she is often moved to open her bowels. If not, we pass on again (hurriedly now, for some fifty yards of sidewalk separate us from our next objective) to another species of refuse dump on the other side of the bridge, the ancient cemetery of Putney Church. The dead are less particular and more charitable than the living. It is a charming little cemetery; the few pretty nineteenth-century head-stones on the water side lean under acacia trees upon a grassy bank that slopes to a low river wall: swans float below. At the back of the church, where Hotpoint House now stands, lived “that excellent woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother of my mind as well as of my health,” as her nephew, Gibbon, who passed much of his youth in her house, described her. Strangely peaceful and secluded, although it lies just below the busy bridge, this small churchyard draws others, besides Tulip and myself, for their private purposes: upon the flattened grass beneath the tombstones in summertime I occasionally find coins, which, unnoticed in the darkness, have slipped out of trouser pockets, and other indications that the poor fleeting living, who have nowhere of their own, have been there to make love among the dead. To what better use could such a place be put? And are not its ghosts gladdened that so beautiful a young creature as Tulip should come here for her needs, whatever they may be? Here, springing from their long-forgotten bones, rankly grow her medicinal grasses, the coarse quitch grass which she searches out to pluck and eat when she wishes to make herself sick, and that other sort of grass she uses to bind and cleanse her bowels; and here too, I hope—it is our last chance—she will unburden herself beside the mortal remains of Caroline, Dowager Countess of Kingston (d. 1823) or of Mr. Stephen Robinson (d. 1827).

But the trouble with dogs is that they are not always inclined to relieve themselves when one desires them to do so, and we cannot hang about the cemetery for ever. Nor would the matter be settled if she did oblige me here. For dogs differ from people, who are usually able to get the business over and done with in one, by having a number of bowel actions during the course of a walk. The fact, therefore, that she may have left a lavish affair upon the Embankment is no sort of guarantee that she will not wish to leave another outside the doors of Woolworth's in the High Street ten minutes later, and then a third and a fourth at intervals thereafter. This truth, which is a general one, makes nonsense of all those official notices which request or command one to control one's dog in this respect. Indeed, I gaze with incredulity at the folly displayed by local councils in the posters and enameled signs they put up all over the place, regardless of expense. Putney is loaded with these signs, clamped to the stems of lamp posts or screwed into walls, especially the walls of alley ways. They read:

Overlooking the peculiar grammar and punctuation of this piece of literature, what does it mean? Here is an alley way stretching ahead of me for two or three hundred yards. It is enclosed by high walls. There is no escape from it except forwards or back. Dogs do not hold up their paws and say “May I?” They simply squat and begin. What do I do if Tulip suddenly squats in the middle of it? How does one restrain a dog who has begun? Anxious as I am to assist in maintaining public health, I should be interested to know what method the Town Clerk would have me employ. The weakness of his position is visible both in the notice itself, which starts with a request and ends with a threat, and in the fact that these alley ways are dotted with offenses from end to end.

I remember seeing a young woman attempting to satisfy the requirements of the law. It was a moving spectacle. Her problem might seem simpler than the one I have set by placing Tulip in an alley; nevertheless she made a deplorable hash of it. The incident occurred at the north end of Sloane Street, and I observed it comfortably from the top of a stationary bus. It was late in the morning, there were plenty of people about, and the lady was walking below me with her Poodle, which was on the lead. As they were passing a cleaners the dog was taken short. Quickly arranging his posterior against the wall of the shop, he began. With a sharp cry of dismay his mistress hauled him across the broad sidewalk to the gutter. It cannot be very pleasant to be dragged about by one's neck at such a moment; in any case the lady's interference could hardly have been more ill timed, and she was now convicted of earlier errors, she had been feeding her dog unwisely and too well. By the time he was safely in the gutter he had finished, and the sidewalk was impassable. If only she had left the good, intelligent creature to his own modest devices, all would have been, if not well, at any rate considerably better.