POND WHEAT!

When I lived in C my dear old Wheat found a pond. Now as any dog lover will tell you dogs love water – No not the nice kind with dog shampers added so they can have a nice bath and smell less Labradorial or anything like that, but rather the filthy stinking kind, full of mud and assorted decaying rubbish and the more disgusting it is the more appealing.

My gran who died at almost ninety-seven, came over to see me which meant a journey on two buses, which she did till she could no longer manage it at age eighty-seven. When she arrived there was no rest for she helped me free run Wheat and it was on one of her little free runs when she found the stinking pond. In she jumped, with all the enthusiasm of an Olympic swimmer and then dread of dreads for me at any rate, she consumed a rather plentiful quantity of this water, muck and all which guaranteed that later on she’d throw up all over the carpet and need a bath as well!

Poor Nan ended up bathing her for me but had gone home before the delightful sound of dog being sick could be heard by me alone late in the night. I had a terrible job clearing this up and had to wait for someone sighted to appear – Possibly or almost certainly days later in order to find out whether I’d been wholly successful.

I got so fed up with this, even to the point of thinking of returning her to Guide Dogs that I sent word to one of the instructors who came down from the training centre to see what was going on and how we could stop it. The man I’ll call Tom had a lovely Northern Irish accent and when we went out, Wheat looked at the water and trotted straight past without a second glance.

“Well now June, I can’t see a problem with this wee dog. Now you know most Labradors and Retrievers love the water don’t you know but she’s a little angel isn’t she”?

I hastily pointed out that I had called him out simply because she loved the water but he seemed so taken with her angelic qualities and devotion to duty that he just couldn’t get his head round that.

Rejoicing outwardly at least but inwardly not convinced, I phoned Nan and said:

“Perhaps she has learned her lesson since being so sick and stinking to high heaven”.

Not so. When Nan came again and suggested free running the little madam, she made straight for the pond and was in it before either of us could say “Jack Robinson”. Luckily it was a warm and very sultry night and knowing what was coming I made her go outside on the balcony where she stayed till she threw up.

The day that Tom came was the one and only time in that dog’s life with me that she ever resisted the temptation of that filthy pond and I swear she knew he was one of the instructors from Guide Dogs. For all her craftiness and deviousness, for all her artfulness and love of ponds and despite her penchant for rolling in all kinds of disgusting stuff I loved her as much as Esme or Cider though I didn’t have Cider long and Esme is, by comparison a clean and ladylike Labrador who is much more of a goody two shoes or four paws. Wheat was a real character but then again so are they all. There’ll never be another one like Wheat and likewise there’ll never be another one like Esme. These dogs are as individual as people and in many cases preferable to some! Except perhaps when they’ve had a “dog bath” in the pond that is.