Elegsabiff

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Dog days – lazy hazy crazy days of summer travelling with a dog

I’m insane. Potty. A couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. Missing on at least one cylinder. Nuts. A bampot.

I am about to tackle a 400 mile drive with a dog that hates cars. Not my car, she quite likes driving to local parks for walks. She’s good as gold when I leave her in it to do shopping, or pay for petrol. What she really resents is cars coming up alongside, or behind, or in front.  And trucks? She really hates trucks. Not keen on buses. Iffy about motorbikes.

She’s a bulldog, and she weighs twenty kilograms, and if I clip her in to her safety belt harness she hurls herself from side to side and barks, howls, barks, whimpers, barks, whuffles and, don’t know if I mentioned, barks.  If I release the harness – or, more accurately, when she releases herself – she jumps from back seat to passenger seat to back to front to back to front.  Wherever possible she digs her claws into my thigh in passing for good purchase – that’s twenty kilograms behind stubby claws. When we first met we drove from Cornwall to Scotland. She started the trip in a dog carrier but managed to break out after two hours. I kept thinking she would get bored, settle down, sleep – she didn’t. She was absolutely exhausted by the time we got here (fifteen hours, because of all the stops for my head to stop ringing, and to get her back in her harness), and sounding a bit hoarse, but still barking. And jumping.

She has three barks. There’s a yappy bark, which would suit a Jack Russell better than a bulldog, pretty piercing. Drills straight through the head. There’s a bulldog bark, steady, firm, which she can keep up for hours on end. And there’s the Rottweiler snarling bark, which she saves for cars or pedestrians that come into her ‘space’ (anything within ten feet) which startles even me.  Every time.

Oh, I know exactly what you’re thinking. Because she hates kennels, that’s why. She is a rescue dog and there are Real Issues there. She hates dogs, all dogs, and when she was handed into the rescue centre she turned her face to the wall, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t drink, and apart from occasionally hurling herself passionately against the wire at the sight of another dog, settled into prolonged hunger strike. She was finally coaxed to take a treat by a volunteer, but had to be hand-fed for weeks. Most of her fur fell out with the stress. So if this trip is the disaster I’m fearing, she can expect to starve her way through a kennel stay in future, and with summer coming up, going bald isn’t too much of a problem.

Yes I could pay someone to stay in the house and look after her and the cat, but she’s a bit odd with people. Unpredictable. Hates casual visitors and has to be locked outside for nearly all. Houseguests – she was graciously welcoming to my daughter, who came to stay for a few days, for the first five hours. Then she attacked her, snarling bark and teeth, and bit her so hard through her trainer it left a bruise. Next morning, back to gracious. One reason I’m taking her is to introduce her to the rest of the family, specifically the ones assuming I’m exaggerating or handling her wrong. There’s a really, really good dog whisperer in Scotland, I had to wait weeks for an appointment and he laughed when he saw her and said we’d soon sort out my little dog. She threw a tantrum, flung herself around, then bided her time and bit him.  It’s practically impossible to bite a dog handler who deals with problem dogs all the time, they’re just too quick, but he did stop underestimating her after that.  He did her a power of good, too, but we never covered car manners, which I am now realising is a real oversight.

I asked the vet for dog valium, but they don’t like to give it to bulldogs as there are recorded fatalities due to their very odd breathing arrangements. He gave me an odd look when I said I was prepared to take the chance, and still wouldn’t give me any.

So what I’m really hoping is that when I get back I’ll write another blog saying she was fantastic and we had a wonderful time.  She will be travelling in a thundershirt, with the windows blacked out, her bed sprayed with calming spray, having taken her herbal calming tablet. If you should happen to be on the motorways between Scotland and Berkshire and notice a small white car with steamed up windows and a bulldog with redrimmed bulging eyes, give us a wave. You’ll know it’s us – you’ll hear the snarling rage as you pass.

 

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Waiting for ET

I don’t believe in aliens, because up to now I haven’t seen / met / experienced any (although there was one night years ago in Africa when I was driving through dark emptiness with a friend and we saw a circle of lights far above that seemed for a while to be tracking us, which was seriously exciting.  However the car, not being suggestible,  continued to rumble firmly on instead of dying in the best tradition, and we regretfully decided it couldn’t have been.  Damn.)  

However, I do believe in ghosts.   I’ve had one unmistakable encounter, and two others that I might have written off as odd moments of fancy, or cheese dreams,  if not for the first,  Our guru on most matters, Stephen Fry, said on QI there were no such things, which just proves he has never encountered one, because the whole thing is like throwing a switch.  You know something isn’t so, and then you know that it is.  In fact, saying I believe in ghosts is misleading, it implies an element of choice.  I know a fat and unwieldy cat can jump onto a counter from a sitting start.    Before I had a cat, I would have scoffed  at the very idea.

 

I am not about to regale you with the experience, because as Spock told Bones, it can’t be discussed except with someone who has shared a similar experience.     However, it does make it interesting reading about other people’s sightings.  You can read one and scoff, because they’re so obviously making it up.  And read another, and know it is true, because the detail (usually far less exciting than the made-up ones) is right. 

So Stephen Fry is wrong (tsk tsk) and I wait with both hope and trepidation to have a real alien encounter.   That would be something to blog about, eh? 

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Loves to travel

“Love to travel” I wrote automatically, then had a double-take moment.  I used to love to travel.  Canada, Australia, Africa, America, Europe, been there (bits of) and done that (most of).    But still love to travel?  Short answer, No. 

Long answer, not until they invent an effective and comfortable teleporter which doesn’t need to be checked for flies or for that matter cockroaches or any other life form that a cheap and imperfect teleporter would incorporate into the unwary traveller’s DNA.  

I love to drive, for up to an hour.  After that the trucks and other cars and those bloody caravans, that isn’t as much fun as it was an hour ago. 

Trains – in my childhood we used to travel overnight to Durban in our own compartment, beds made up, choc on the pillow, I loved that.  Find me a train still doing that and I’ll rethink the travel thing. 

Sea travel?  Having been inevitably queasy on numerous ferries I’ve never felt the urge to go on a cruise.  Being trapped in a hotel which is bobbing up and down doesn’t immensely appeal. 

And flying, well, don’t get me started.  I’m claustrophobic and hate crowds, so being wedged in a cramped seat a mile above the ground in a metal tube with a few hundred people is about as close to my personal definition of hell as I hope I’ll ever get. 

I quite enjoy the actual holiday bit – exploring strange new places and enjoying different lifestyles – but there’s always the looming anxiety about the bloody awful trip back.  And whether I remembered to switch the oven off.  

After that little epiphany I examined the rest of my answers.   Hmmm.  Red hair?  Not so much.  As a Twitter friend said recently, I’m blonder every time he sees me.  Thanks DC but we both know the creeping blonde is in fact creeping pepper-and-salt.  Build?  Oh dear.  A few extra pounds does heavily rely on one’s personal definition of a few.  Changed that to Large.  They need an extra definition between those two – like, oh, 20% overweight.  

So, let’s re-examine the application.  Large greying anti-social smoker who won’t travel, doesn’t like walks in the rain, would rather poke herself in the eye with a mascara wand than watch sport on telly, is okay with animals as long as they don’t crap in the flowerbeds or need feeding early on a Sunday morning, and will never ever respond to any written approach from someone who spells as though Slade had taught them their English.

Yup, scrapped the application.  What’s the point?