DOG TAILS 3. GIVE A DOG A BONE

After he’d moved in with me, the routine early morning walk varied according to how much time I had before leaving for work. The late night stroll always followed an anticlockwise route round the entire estate, which Mac generally did off-lead and at his own pace, especially in his later years when arthritis slowed him down. Back in those days doggy bags were something you brought home from a restaurant, not what you collect dog poo in.
One Saturday night I finished the walk alone and found him laid on the front lawn, gnawing at the entire hip bone of a cow. It was more like the remains of a wolf kill than scraps from the local butcher.
The following Saturday night he suddenly sprinted across the road and jumped over someone’s wall, chasing a cat I presumed. I carried on without waiting and later found him on the lawn with an identical bone.
The third Saturday he went over the wall at the same house, so I waited. Sure enough after two minutes he emerged triumphant with half a cow in his mouth and set off for home with a spring in his step. ‘No you don’t,’ I said, calling him to heel. Instantly, the bone became such a heavy burden his limp got worse and he was only able to walk at a snail’s pace. When I got back he was happily chomping away on the lawn, clearly having turned off at the first junction and taken a short cut.
Week four I waited for him appear with the bone, sat down and waited at every road junction and made him do the full circuit to ensure his bladder was well and truly empty. As a reward I allowed him an hour’s gnawing on the lawn before bedtime.
I did, of course, feel sorry for the poor dog that kept losing his weekend treat. He probably spent all night dreaming about a lazy Sunday with nothing to do but chomp, only to find it had been stolen by a thief in the night. The thief in question, obviously being smarter, always attempted to sneak his ill-gotten gains into the house. When that failed he tried burying it, which meant a wash afterwards (nearly as bad as a bath). To save time and effort I put it in the garage, with Mac watching to ensure I locked it securely.
One Saturday night we met the Chihuahua, a vicious little brute which attacked every dog it met, irrespective of size. It yanked and pulled and snapped and yapped until it managed to pull its head out of its collar. Either the husband or wife, whoever was walking it, would then have to snatch it up off the ground before a fight broke out. On this occasion, hampered by the weight in his mouth, Mac was too slow to react and the beast dived in and bit his back leg before it could be retrieved.
Mac swung round in pain and hit the Chihuahua smack between the eyes with the hip bone, poleaxing it instantly. It lay unconscious in the middle of the pavement.
‘Oh my God! He’s killed it,’ the husband said.
I reached down and placed a hand on the still form. ‘He’s breathing. I would take him home and wait for him to recover.’
‘Are you mad?’ the husband cried. ‘If I walk in the house with him in that condition she’ll kill me.’
Not knowing what else to do we sat on the wall and watched and waited. Mac, meanwhile, had settled down on the grass verge and started to chomp.
After a few minutes another of the regular dog walkers approached. He stopped and took in the scene. ‘Dare I ask?’
His dog immediately decided to try his luck, but Mac was up in an instant, guarding his property, hackles raised and jowls pulled back in a vicious snarl. If you could have drawn a balloon coming from his mouth, the words would have been, “Don’t even think about it, pal. Just look what happened to the last one that tried.”
The guy put his dog on a lead and hurried off, leaving us to resume our vigil.
After several minutes the Chihuahua came round and struggled groggily to its feet. The relieved husband picked it up and headed home. The trouble was, by now it had a bump the size of bird’s egg on its forehead. There was no way to disguise what had happened.
Several days later, when I bumped into the wife on a morning walk, she laughed about it and made a fuss of Mac. The husband had evidently walked in and said it wasn’t as bad as it looked and that it was a freak accident.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Mac hit him with a cow’s hip. It was huge.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?
‘It’s true, I swear.’
‘A Border collie hit him with a flower?’
‘Not a cowslip, a cow’s hip, as in bone.’