Red Dog (9 page)

Red Dog used to call in quite frequently on the caravan park where Nancy, Patsy, and Ellen were living whilst the new houses were being built. It was a pleasant enough place, with tubs of flowers set out on either side of the pathways, and people’s washing hanging on lines.

The only thing wrong with it was that there was a rule that stated
NO DOGS
, and a caretaker who not only did not like dogs, but was determined to enforce the rule. His name was Mr Cribbage, and whenever he saw Red Dog he tried to shoo him away. Later on Red Dog was to cause Mr Cribbage a considerable amount of trouble, but right from the start he also caused some trouble for Red Cat.

Red Cat definitely approved of the rule about
NO DOGS
. In fact, Red Cat hated dogs so much that if he
had been dictator of Australia, he would probably have had all the dogs executed. There was no rule forbidding cats in the caravan park, and so Red Cat very much liked it there. Red Cat was the boss of all the cats in Dampier.

He was a ginger tom, big, muscly and mean. He had green eyes and tatty ears, he had a slantways scar on his nose, he had a white bib on his chest, and a tail that was barred in lighter and darker shades. He had great big paws, and when he stretched them out, the claws would spring from their sheaths like curved swords. When he sat on your lap and purred, you could feel the vibration shaking the bones in your head. When you dangled a string in front of him to make him play, you made very sure that your fingers were out of his reach. When he caught a rat, you could hear the crunch of its bones as Red Cat munched it up. When he yowled and wauled at night to attract the lady cats who were the mothers of his kittens, it sounded as though a baby was being tortured to death. When he ate his dinner, he could, if he chose, wolf it almost as fast as Red Dog. Red Cat had never lost a fight.

If Red Cat saw a dog, his policy was to jump on its back, dig his claws in, and ride it around the caravan park until it was too tired and terrified to run any more. Then Red Cat would jump off and swipe it across the nose, leaving four parallel scratches that trickled with blood. Then, when the dog rolled over and surrendered with its paws in the air, Red Cat would parade proudly
away, the tip of his tale waving with self-satisfaction. More often than not, the dog would not come back to risk this treatment again.

Red Dog liked chasing cats, and had plenty of rake-marks on his snout to prove it. He was a cleverer dog than most, but like most dogs he had never really managed to learn that a dog always loses a fight with a cat, because eventually the cat will turn round and lash out. Red Dog was an optimist, and he sincerely believed that just because a cat runs away to begin with, then he must already be the winner. Anyway, it was such fun doing the chasing that, as far as he was concerned, it was worth getting scratched for it later.

When Red Dog explored the caravan park for the first time, he walked around the back of Nancy’s allotment, and came face to face with Red Cat. Red Dog was overcome with excitement, and leaped forward to give chase.

He stopped a fraction of a second later, however, because Red Cat did not turn and run. He sat quite still, and opened his mouth and hissed. Red Dog was impressed by the pink tongue and the two rows of shiny white teeth.

He pounced again, but still Red Cat did not run. This time he flattened his ears and hissed again, even louder. Red Dog began to have doubts, but he couldn’t resist having another try. Red Cat stood up, arched his back, flattened his ears and hissed, even more loudly. Red Dog sat back on his haunches, puzzled by this unusually valiant cat, but something made him have another try. Red Cat bushed up his tail, made the fur stand up on his back, flattened his ears, hissed, and hit out so quickly that Red Dog didn’t even know what had happened until his nose began to sting and drip with blood.

Just as Red Cat wasn’t going to be frightened by Red Dog, neither was Red Dog going to be frightened by Red Cat. He bared his teeth and growled. Red Cat bared his teeth and hissed. Red Dog barked in anger. Red Cat spat.

Red Cat tried to spring onto Red Dog’s back, so that he could ride him around with his claws well stuck in, but Red Dog dodged out of the way just in time. Snout to snout, growling and hissing, neither animal would give ground. Red Cat scratched Red Dog again. Red Dog tried to bite, but missed. Then Nancy came round the corner and interrupted the whole confrontation.

There was now a new vet in Roebourne, which was much closer than Port Hedland, and the new clinic wasn’t even properly completed yet. The young vet looked at the deep slashes in Red Dog’s nose, and tutted as he cleaned and stitched them. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but I saw a dog just like this last week. Had a thorn in his paw. Different owner, though. And the week before, somebody else brought in a dog just like this for immunisation. It’s weird. Hard to believe there’s so many dogs that all look the same.’

Nancy smiled to herself. Red Dog was everybody’s dog now, and anyone would take him to the vet if there were need of it. People were taking bets to see how long it would be before the vet realised that all the different Red Dogs that looked the same were in fact the same Red Dog. So far he had been to the clinic five times, and the vet had still not put two and two together.

When Red Dog returned to the caravan park he sniffed around until he found the freshest trail that Red Cat had left behind. There was something about that cat that interested him. He eventually tracked it to a patch of silver saltbush, where it was lying in wait for rabbits, and for just a short time they put on a repeat performance of the hissing and growling.

Eventually it all seemed too much bother, however, and people were surprised to see them sitting side by side watching the evening coming down, listening to the kangaroos thumping out in the wilderness, just like two old folk on a bungalow verandah.

They were unlikely friends, but friends is what they certainly became. Red Cat still hated dogs, but for Red Dog he made an exception. When Red Dog turned up at the caravan site, Red Cat would come bounding up, bump him under the chin with the top of his head, and wind in and out of his legs, tracing figures of eight, whilst he just stood there looking embarrassed. Red Dog still chased cats, but he made an exception for Red Cat. If anyone threatened his friend, it was Red Dog who ran up growling to defend him. He and Red Cat made quite a few dogs and foxes regret that they had ever ventured into their domain.

One evening Nancy took a picture of Red Dog fast asleep under the bougainvillea with Red Cat sleeping on top of him. She had two copies printed, sent one of them to a magazine, and had the other framed so that she could put it up on the wall.

RED DOG,
DON AND THE RANGER

Red Dog had travelled for about five years after John’s death before he got to know the men at the Dampier Salt Company, and this only happened because of an accident.

He had hitched a lift with Peeto from Port Hedland back to Dampier, and had begun the journey safely enough, sitting in the front seat of the Ford Falcon, with his head out of the window as usual. The trouble was that he had eaten three sausages, a lamb chop, the remains of a steak and kidney pie, some baked beans and a bowl of cabbage with gravy at a hotel where he had befriended the cook. The consequence, of course, was another of his famous attacks of evil-smelling wind, and so Peeto had transferred him to the small trailer that he was towing behind his car.

This trailer was heaped with swags and other camping gear, because Peeto had been on a fishing trip in the crocodile-infested mangrove swamps of Broome, and so Red Dog had been obliged to sit on top of that swaying mound, trying not to get flung off every time that the vehicle braked or went around a corner. When they reached the junction where they were to turn off towards Dampier, however, Peeto tried to get out in a hurry so that he wouldn’t have to wait for an approaching car. Red Dog was unprepared, as at that precise moment he was daydreaming about rabbits, and quite suddenly he went flying into the road, landing heavily and painfully, and twisting one of his hind legs. The car disappeared into the distance, the driver unaware that his famous passenger had parted company with him, and Red Dog hopped on three legs back to the side of the road.

Red Dog was quite used to falling off trailers, and out of the trays of utes, as these were common mishaps for Western Australian dogs, and he knew that he would feel better before long. If necessary, three legs would be quite sufficient for walking on for the time being.

It was a man called Don who spotted Red Dog limping towards Dampier. Don worked for Dampier Salt, the company that had transformed the landscape of the area by digging out huge, shallow rectangular pits that they filled with seawater. The water then dried away, leaving behind it the gleaming white carpets of salt that sparkled and shimmered in the bright sunshine.
If you stood on the high ground outside Dampier, you could look across the saltfields and see a great white mountain in the distance, where the company had heaped their harvest high, in preparation for processing.

Don knew all about Red Dog, and had often seen him round about, but they had never until now been introduced, which was why Red Dog didn’t leap out in front of Don’s car in order to try to stop it. Red Dog only stopped people he knew, or vehicles that he recognised.

Don stopped, however, and got out of his car. Red Dog lay down with his tongue hanging out, and allowed Don to roll him over. Don felt the injured leg gently, and said, ‘Well, mate, I can’t find anything wrong, but I reckon it’s a trip to the vet for you.’

‘Ah,’ said the new vet, when Don brought the casualty in, ‘it’s Red Dog again.’

‘You know him then,’ said Don.

‘I do now,’ said the vet. ‘For a long time I thought he was several dogs who all looked the same. Then I realised it was one dog with nine lives who belonged to everyone. Never heard of anything like it. Actually you can say I know him pretty well.’

‘How’s that, then?’ asked Don.

‘’Cause he took a fancy to my little bitch, and he kept coming back, and then he decided he was going to camp out on my verandah. Well, that was all right with me, except that he started to think it was his place altogether, and that was when the trouble began. Whenever another male dog turned up, Red tried to see him
off, and then one day there was a dog that only came in for his jabs, and when he left he had five stitches.’

‘Don’t suppose Red liked it when another dog came near his sheila,’ laughed Don.

‘Exactly,’ agreed the vet, nodding his head. ‘So anyway, I had to tell him to leave, ’cause I can’t have him assaulting my customers. So off he went, and now he just comes back to say hello. He gets some tucker and a snooze on the porch, and then he’s off. You know what he does? He recognises any car from Dampier, and he goes and sits next to it ’til the driver comes back.’ The vet ruffled Red Dog’s ears, and added, ‘No hard feelings, eh mate?’

The vet examined Red Dog’s leg but couldn’t find any breaks or fractures, so he decided that it was probably badly bruised. ‘I just want to see something,’ he said to Don, and he went to his cupboard and took out a new syringe, which he removed carefully from its sterilised plastic wrapping.

‘What are you gonna do, doc?’ asked Don. ‘Give him an anaesthetic?’

‘No,’ replied the vet, ‘it’s just that I’ve noticed that Red isn’t quite his old self any more.’

‘Well, he’s getting on a bit, isn’t he? Grey hairs on his snout. Does anyone know how old he is?’

‘About eight, I think.’

‘Well, what do you think might be wrong?’

The vet looked thoughtful, and said, ‘He’s eight, and he’s spent his life travelling, and roughing it when he
has to, so he’s got a right to be tired. But he’s a tough fella, and just recently he’s been losing fights and getting hurt more than he ought to. I’m going to check him out for heartworm.’

‘Oh, yuk,’ said Don, ‘what’s that?’

‘Just what it sounds like,’ said the vet. ‘It’s a worm that circulates in the blood when it’s a larva, and lives in the heart when it grows up. Sometimes you get a great fistful of them living in there, and then the dog can die. It’s getting more common, and I’ve got a feeling that’s what’s up with Red. The trouble is, I’m going to have to keep him for quite a while, and this clinic isn’t even finished. I haven’t had the cages put in yet. Can you keep him under lock and key until I get the results?’