Obviously, today my mind is rather on the French election, but I am trying not to think about it. Instead I am spending time with my splendid dog, Histoire.
When I meet people socially I tend to say that Histoire is a rescue dog, but that's not really true. Real rescue dogs are found in charitable pounds, chosen for their charm and character by prospective owners, and brought home to previously inspected suitable accommodation. Not so H.
What happened was this:
I was in the process of very slowly moving house, and was then still living in a small house with one door which opened directly onto a country road. Normally I kept the door shut but for some reason that day I had left it open. It was Friday, July the first, about nine-thirty in the morning. It was hot, and I was sitting in the cool main room listening to radio 4 and footling about with facebook on the laptop.
(I should add that at this time I was more or less terrified of strange dogs, though I was capable of becoming fond of a dog if I came to know it well over a period of years... at one time I had a full blown phobia exacerbated by an allergy to dogs which gave me asthma).
As I sat there peacefully on the sofa I suddenly became aware of a sound like a small steam engine coming from the direction of the open door and gradually getting louder and louder... and then there hove into view a medium sized black dog panting so loudly that the noise drowned out the radio.
I jumped instantly onto the sofa in the manner of a cartoon woman confronted with a cartoon mouse. I shrieked at her (though of course I didn't know she was a her) using my extensive vocabulary of English swear words to no avail. She sat on the rug, still panting, and looked at me patiently, waiting for me to calm the fuck down.
I climbed over the back of the sofa so that I was between the door and the problem (trick I learned from working at the Citizen's Advice Bureau) and began to breathe again. I got her a bowl of water and she gulped it down. I looked out of the door to see if walkers were passing and had lost their dog. (The house is at the junction of two long distance footpaths and we got a lot of walkers). I walked around the hamlet and asked workmen if they had lost a dog. There were no takers. The black dog (as I thought of her) trotted patiently behind me, waiting for me to come to my senses.
My neighbour is a late riser so I agonised about banging on his door but eventually I thought I had no other options.
"Il y a une crise!" I bellowed through the tightly bolted shutters. "Au secours!"
Eventually he shuffled sleepily to the door. "What can I do? I don't know what to do! I can't have a DOG in my HOUSE!"
He called the Mairie. They were unhelpful. "You'll have to hang on to the dog for now," was their response. "If we hear of someone who's lost a dog, we'll let you know." Phone down.
We tied the dog (who had snaffled some salami off my neighbour's kitchen table) to his shutter with a length of washing line while I raced off to the supermarket for dog food, a collar and lead (all she had was a nasty bit of chain round her neck), bowls for water and food,and, because I am basically a softy, a squeaky carrot to play with.
And so the day went on. I took her for a long walk and admired her elegant lines. Another neighbour, an elderly lady who needs to know everything that's going on in the hamlet, came over and deftly removed a couple of ticks from the dog's face with her fingernails, explaining that she used to keep sheep and so is pretty expert at tick removal. I tried to interest her in the squeaky carrot but she was scared of it. We all discussed the Dog Problem and it began to dawn on me that I would have to keep the dog overnight.
Wales were playing Belgium in the European Cup that night and because I am a quarter Welsh I thought it was my duty to support them. The Dog and I sat on the sofa and watched the match. Every time Wales scored I cheered, and The Dog licked my hand. She put her head on my knee. I fell a bit in love. I thought I might call her Freya, because she had arrived on a Friday and the neighbours had informed me she was a girl.
At bedtime I went up my very very steep staircase and she couldn't follow, so she cried... I talked to her through the floor until I fell asleep. In the morning, there she was on the sofa, as comfy as could be. The house was not wrecked, nothing had been chewed, there was no poo on the rug... none of the things I had feared had happened. I liked this dog.
After breakfast my elderly lady neighbour came hobbling over again. "I've been thinking," she said, "maybe the dog has a microchip (puce)?" You could take her to the vet and they could check."
I looked up the vet on my phone and found that they were open on a Saturday morning, so I heaved the dog into the car with some difficulty. I had to physically pick her up, struggling, and put her in the back. Then I drove at about twenty miles an hour to the vet's, the dog sliding about in the back... I kept thinking "This is Mad! I have a Dog in my Car!!".
We got to the vet's. The lovely nurse scanned the dog. Then she said:
"Bonjour Histoire!"
I found I had a lump in my throat.
"She has a family?"
"Yes, we have the address here on the computer. We'll call the owner now."
She called the owner. I didn't hear the other end of the conversation but the upshot was that he couldn't be bothered to come and get her straight away and would come down later in the afternoon. The surgery said they would hang on to her, and she was led away from me to a room.
To my own amazement and great embarrassment I burst into tears and ran out of the surgery, got into my car, drove home blubbing, and spent the rest of the weekend in seclusion, feeling sad.
TBC
