The Boldest Dog in Ireland

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog –Dwight D Eisenhower

I thought it was going to be a nice quiet week, without drama or adventure to give me something to write about.  I was wrong.

This is Poppy.

She is, without doubt, the boldest dog I ever met in my life.  If our three dogs were criminals, Marley would be a jaywalker, Rory would have ten points on his licence for speeding, and Poppy would be Genghis Khan.

She joined our merry band the same week as Rory.  I think His Nibs was a bit jealous that I’d bonded so well with the new puppy, and wanted a puppy of his own.  And so he sneaked off, allegedly to a hurling match, and returned with Poppy.  He alleges that she was homeless.  We were later told by the vet that she was thirteen weeks old.  I remember quite distinctly asking His Nibs why a cute little dog like her would have no home at thirteen weeks old.  I worried whether there was something wrong with her.

And I could spend my days doing my I told you so dance around this house because, God knows, I was right. 

She is deranged and demented and bonkers.  But like a pair of fools, we love her.  Especially His Nibs.  He absolutely adores her, and lets her do what she likes.  Maybe he feels sorry for her, because of my constant roars of

"Poppy, will you stop? Stop! Please, Poppy, please.  Right, that’s it.  You have to go.” 

I don’t know why I bother.  I know we can’t get rid of her.  Conversely, because she is so bold.  If we didn’t have her, she’d end up in the pound in a few days.  Sure who else would put up with her?

I’m not unprovoked in criticising her.  Being an early riser, His Nibs goes to bed early.  I don’t.  I love night time.  Especially during the weeks when we’re both working early shifts.  Because I’ve had two car naps (see last week’s blog).

So off His Nibs goes to bed.  Followed by a troop of dogs.  They hop up on the bed.  Eventually I follow them.  When I get to our room, Marley hops off the bed, and makes his own arrangements, in his own bed, which I appreciate.  Rory ignores me.

Poppy prefers not to get off the bed.  She starts growling and giving out and grabbing mouthfuls of duvet.  So I have to have another row with her, it’s all a lot of hassle at bedtime. 

And she’s constantly making bids for freedom.  She headbutts the wooden fence panels around our garden until they give way.  Maybe she has a brain injury by now, actually.  And once she cracks the fence panel she starts chewing bits out of it until she can fit out the hole.  Poor eejity Marley follows her, and the two of them gallop around the estate causing ructions until one of our fantastic neighbours takes them in. 

Then we come home and have to beg forgiveness and prostate ourselves with gratitude, which is genuine, and buy another fecking fence panel.

Poppy at our six feet high fence.

Yesterday was a new low.  I was in work, and didn’t look at my phone until around 12.  I had several messages.  All from the neighbours.  All telling me that the boldest dog ever born had made another successful escape.  She was running around the estate causing mayhem and barking at people and being a complete nuisance.

I couldn’t just leave her to cause uproar and finish up with a good belt of a passing car, could I? I took a half day.  The poor neighbours were, by all accounts, run ragged trying to save the little fecker.  I couldn’t just sit in work and let them get on with it.  I don’t have that many holidays left, as it happens.  They seem to evaporate like my money does, with no explanation.  I do not consider using them up to collect a delinquent dog a good plan.

I had to take His Nibs’ car, and leave him in work.  As I drove I visualised her lying on the road, tyre tracks on her fur.  Or some poor small child with tooth marks in its hand.  I had myself wound up to ninety by the time I got home.

I got another call en route.  She was in a neighbour’s house. Rescued again.  I went straight to that house, on my arrival in our estate.  These very kind neighbours have a dog of their own.  When I got to their house, Poppy was in their garden.  This was, it transpired, because she’d been in the house, and decided she liked the look of the chair their dog is allowed sit on.  So she went for the Labrador’s throat, in the innocent neighbour’s kitchen.

The kindly neighbour was driving her car into our estate yesterday when she saw a streak of white fly by.  And she thought to herself that it looked like our dog.  So she grabbed her own dog’s lead, and followed Boldy Arse down to the village.  Where Madam was running over and back, across the main road, as the admittedly scant traffic built up around her.  Neighbour approached, but apparently it was like that scene in Rocky where he’s trying to catch the chicken.  I’m not surprised.  I can’t get my hands on Poppy in the confines of our kitchen.  There’s no way I’d catch her out in the world.

There’s a number of volunteers who clean up our village on a Monday morning.  At least I think they’re volunteers.  To be honest, for all I know they could be a chain gang on day release from Portlaoise prison, but I very much doubt it.  They all look like nice law abiding people.  One of the group decided to assist our neighbour.  With no success.  So another member joined in.  And eventually the entire group, and our neighbour, were in the middle of the village begging this one small dog to control herself and not throw herself under the traffic.   Where she would have been perfectly safe, as it happened,  traffic being at a complete standstill for some minutes at this point.

Eventually she was corralled into a corner, hitched up to a lead, and led back to our estate, to cause murders in her rescuers kitchen.  That dog will make an old woman of me.

His Nibs came home on the bus.   One of the reasons that His Nibs was so attractive to me, when we met back in the Dark Ages, was because he was absolutely gorgeous.  Another was that he had a car.  We lived deep in the country, and young lads with cars of their own, instead of just a loan of their parents car on a Saturday night, were like hen’s teeth.  His Nibs, being the independent soul he is, worked himself into the ground when he was a teenager, to keep his car on the road.  He’s always had a car.  He is not in the habit of taking buses.  Apparently it made him sick, and gave him a pain in his belly.  He wasn’t in the best of form when he arrived home, even later than usual, tired, and a little green around the gills.

He was even less pleased when he was informed that I had booked a dog trainer who is supposed to be brilliant.  He’s been recommended to me a couple of times.  He runs obedience classes in a field in town.  There can be up to twenty dogs at one of these classes.  We can’t go, because our dogs are so bold they’d fight with every hound in the place and the whole class would fall asunder.

Happily, it transpires that this man will come to our house for three hours, and train all five of us to behave ourselves together.  He is not intimidated by my reports of Poppy’s Houdini like adventures.  I didn’t tell him about the rest of her carry on.

I decided that in order to make the most of the three hour class, I should make a list of problems we’d like to address.  I started, but it got out of hand very quickly.  I’ve had to stop.  It was just too depressing.  In any case, their behaviour is so appalling at this stage that I think the trainer will know what’s what from the second he sets eyes on the little brats.

He hasn’t got an appointment until the second week of June.  By then at least two of them might have been squashed by a car on one of their escapes.  Or they may have finally eaten each other alive.  Or His Nibs and I might be in a home for the bewildered.  But if all goes well, I’ll report further.