IS THAT YOUR LITTLE DUCKY?
And other songs for dogs
Sometimes I wonder why I’m still single. Then I remember that on an average day, my hair smells of dog biscuits. While other women model the latest alluring fashions, I am usually found in hiking boots and with dog hair in my bra. As for hobbies, well. Where other single eligible women may take up team sports or pub quizzes, I spend much of my free time searching in piles of fallen leaves for errant dog-deposits. It’s a bit like doing those Magic Eye pictures, except that when the scene finally resolves and you find what you’re looking for, you then have to spend the next half an hour walking around clutching a plastic sachet of poop. Kind of like how a Mediaeval princess might have carried a bag of scented herbs about her person. Like a completely gross version of that.
I expect there’s a fetish site somewhere where I’d make a real splash, although I’d really rather not.
They used to say that on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. But most of my days, I’m pretty sure no one knows I’m not a dog. Mainly because I spend most of my days with dogs, and they have no fucking clue. I’m fairly certain that most dogs think I’m also a dog. Like a weird big dog that never stops singing to them and always has treats in her pockets.
I often wonder how much dogs understand of my songs and other attempts at communication with them. I imagine my voice is merely a background burble they happily ignore as they go about doing whatever they were going to do in the first place.
The things I most frequently say to dogs are, in reverse order:
5. Do your snifferising then
4. You’re such a little grumblebumble/picklebutt/funny bunny
3. No, come on, you’re not a seagull
2. That’s enough of your wooferising
1. What the pickles?!
Recently, there’s a new entry shooting up the charts, which goes, “Is that your little ducky?” This is because the Labrador I’m looking after this week has a favourite toy: an old, threadbare, stuffed squeaky duck. Often a dog’s love for a toy can be quite destructive, but in this case, we’re talking about a gentle devotion.
There’s a game the dog likes to play, whereby she will wiggle around with her little duck toy held carefully in her jaws and I will gingerly try to get the ducky from her. If I succeed, then we switch roles. She loves this game and can play it for hours.
The whole time we’re playing, I keep up a running commentary along the lines of, “Is that your little ducky? Is it your ducky? Are you going to give Georgie the ducky? Oh it’s my little ducky now! You can’t get the ducky!” And so on.
Sometimes we play with the stinky teddy instead, but it’s the exact same game and commentary, just substituting “stinky teddy” for “ducky.” Sometimes there’s the addition of extra lines such as, “I don’t want that stinky teddy. Where’s your little ducky?” Although, to be fair, the ducky is fairly stinky too.
I didn’t quite realise I was giving this commentary until the other afternoon when, mid-game, we were interrupted by a pointed ‘ahem!’ from the next-door neighbour.
I was surprised, because the next-door neighbour also has a dog, a little one who sometimes snuffles at us through the fence, probably wanting to join in with one of our ducky games, which I’m pretty sure would not be allowed. Indeed, the mere request would likely be met with violence. I would have thought that the neighbours having a dog of their own would mean they understood all about talking to dogs. But maybe not. I’m now wondering if the neighbours are actually not dog people at all, but rather the kind of people who give their dogs normal names, like Mark or Terry.
Those people are bad, but they might not be as bad the people who put their dogs into clothes. Most dogs aren’t into that. Although, having said that, a few winters ago I bought one of my sister’s dogs a jumper and she reacted like Dobby being given a sock. Absolute joy and delight. Unfortunately, it turned out that Daisy wasn’t ready for the responsibility of a pink woolly roll-neck. She went absolutely mad with the power. (In the end we had to take the jumper off her because she got poop on it.)
Dogs sometimes do like to wield power, it’s true. And they’re pretty good at it, too. Only the other day, the dog stared at me for so long and so desperately that I actually turned the TV off, got up, and put my shoes on before I realised what the hell I was doing. It was like the way Luke Skywalker telepathically convinced those stormtroopers to leave him alone, only in this case, Luke Skywalker happened to be a Labrador, and the confused stormtroopers were one middle-aged woman, who was supposed to be in charge of the situation, and of the Labrador, but had somehow been outwitted by both.
We're never going on a dog walk together.
Some of the shit I say to Peanut would get me institutionalised if normal people heard it. She also wields tremendous power; her favourite trick is to just bat whatever is in my hand out of the way so she can sit in my lap. Phone or TV remote, not so bad. Cup of tea, bit more perilous. For both of us.