Tea and Dog Biscuits

Cover design: Sarah Olson

Cover images: dog, Waldemar Dabrowski/Shutterstock; landscape, John Woodworth/Photodisc/Getty Images

This edition published in 2010 by Chicago Review Press

Published by arrangement with Summersdale Publishers Ltd.

© 2009 by Barrie Hawkins

All rights reserved

Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-56976-341-4

Printed in the United States of America

5  4  3  2  1

This book is dedicated to Gerry Robinson, who helps animals when others pass by

Tea and Dog Biscuits
is an account of real events, but identities, locations and some details have necessarily been changed for reasons of privacy and confidentiality.

1. Squashing the Daisies

2. In the Beginning

3. A Special Day

4. Food, Glorious Food

5. A Quick Start

6. Healthy Exercise

7. Doubt

8. Helping with Enquiries

9. Goodbye

10. Squashing My Foot

11. A Friend

12. People

13. Death Row

14. On My Trail

15. Different People

16. Legal Complications

17. And on the Seventh Day

18. Unexpected

19. Sixth Sense

20. Hard

21. The Christmas Present

22. A Perfect Match

23. Happy Anniversary

Postscript

Author's Note

‘He was a guard dog.'

‘A guard dog!' I repeated.

‘In a car breakers' yard in the East End,' Cecilia added.

I stood in silent contemplation for several moments as the implications of that piece of information sank in. A couple of months earlier my wife and I had decided to help dogs that needed a home. Since then we had taken in a few – this would be the seventh orphan – but the others had all been family pets.

‘Was a guard dog… How long ago?' I asked.

‘Two or three hours,' Cecilia replied.

I stood in silent contemplation again, this time with my mouth open.

Where's Dorothy? I thought. This would happen when Dorothy isn't here. My wife was usually there to take charge when the dogs came in.

Cecilia was looking at me intently. I felt I was beginning to look hesitant in front of her and needed to offer an explanation.

‘Dorothy mostly handles the dogs,' I said. ‘I deal with the people.' At least, that was the plan.

‘I bet you he's a poppet,' Cecilia said.

I turned and looked at the former parcel-delivery van in which Cecilia had brought the dog. I remembered that she'd always had a Volvo and I asked her what had happened to it. I think I was filling in time, putting off the moment before we had to open the back door of that van.

‘He's too big to get in the Volvo estate,' Cecilia said.

I looked up to the heavens.

Cecilia forced a smile. ‘Only joking, Barrie. The engine seized. They said I'd never put any oil in it.'

I had the suspicion that this was her way of preparing me.

She turned to the van. ‘Isn't he quiet in there?' She turned back to give me another smile, this time a reassuring one. ‘He could be so laid-back he's gone to sleep.'

In her urge to reassure me Cecilia was losing sight of reality: despite not doing rescue work for long, I knew enough to know the dog was not going to be having a snooze.

I went to the back of the Transit van to try to get a glimpse of what Cecilia had brought us, but somebody had painted the windows black.

‘He is tied in, isn't he?' I asked.

I had already learned some valuable lessons about handling strange dogs. One of them was that if you open the door of a vehicle with a dog inside it is likely to leap out – and, in our circumstances, run off. I had learnt that when a dog comes to us, Safety First dictates that the dog should be secured in the vehicle used to bring him. Especially if he is not brought to us by his owner – as in this case.

Cecilia shook her head and endeavoured to look contrite. ‘I know he should have been, Barrie, but…' Her voice trailed off.

‘But what?'

‘I meant to – I know it's a lot safer – but I didn't put him in the van.'

‘You didn't put him in?' This was an interesting piece of information.

‘No, the men at the yard put him in.'

‘So you haven't handled this dog, Cecilia?'

She shook her head again.

‘I can't deal with big dogs, Barrie, I only want to rescue Yorkies and littlies. That's why I brought him to you.'

Now she put on the pleading voice, a voice that I was going to hear many times in the future, had I but known it.

‘Oh please, Barrie, please take him. I don't know what I'll do if you don't take him.'

She took hold of a strand of her long unbrushed hair, twiddled it round a finger and hung her head. A woman who, when it came to rescuing dogs, had single-handedly chased an armed gang of illegal hare coursers, now managed to look helpless.

‘You did leave his lead on him,' I said. It wasn't a question.

Having done rescue work for years, she would know that it's easier to catch a dog if it has a trailing lead you can jump on. This prevents having to grab the dog, which is not to be recommended if you are a stranger and it is a large dog.

I had a comforting thought: Dorothy will be home soon. Then I remembered that she would be going after work to join Jolly Jumpers, a trampolining class. I couldn't ask her to miss the first class. She would be having fun leaping about on a trampoline while I was leaping about trying to grab hold of a big dog I'd never met before.

‘It's Dorothy that mostly deals with the dogs,' I said.

Yes, I know. You said before.'

I sighed.

There was nothing else for it but to get him out.

‘OK,' I said. ‘We'll just have to open the door and grab his lead so that he can't run off.' I hadn't noticed that Cecilia had remained silent when I spoke about the lead. ‘But as he doesn't know us he might hang back – if he does, I'll call his name.' I marched across to the van.

Cecilia stayed where she was.

I put my hands on my hips. ‘Come on, Cecilia. You've got to help. I can't do it on my own.'

She walked slowly across to join me. Now I was at the van doors I had butterflies in my tummy and her reluctance was adding to their number.

‘What's his name?' I asked.

Cecilia shook her head.

‘You don't know the dog's name!'

‘Don't get angry with me, Barrie.'

‘Cecilia, how did you manage not to even ask his name?'

‘He hasn't got one.'

I fell silent.

‘He's never had a name, Barrie. He's just been “the dog”.'

Cecilia had stopped me in my tracks. They never even gave him a name? Surely nobody would have a dog and not give him a name.

‘Hadn't they had him long then?' I asked eventually.

‘They've had him years. He's a big mature male.'

The van had twin back doors. My hand halfway to the handle of one of them, I paused. A dog of mature years is much less likely to take instructions from a stranger. He is much more likely to be confident and assertive.

‘And Barrie …' Cecilia screwed up her face to break painful news. ‘He hasn't got a collar on.'

It took me a while before I could speak. ‘You are
joking!
How do I get hold of him when we get him out?'

Cecilia shook her head. ‘They've never had a collar on him.'

I sighed again. Not even a collar! I could feel my forehead was damp with sweat.

Cecilia took hold of my arm. ‘Barrie, the man grabbed his mane – he's got the biggest mane I've ever seen on a dog. Oh, and Barrie – he's got a huge chest and this enormous neck. And that wonderful mane is almost ginger.' She nodded enthusiastically. ‘He's like a lion.'

I sighed again. The longer I put it off, the worse it would be. I took hold of the handle on the back door. No sound came from within. I tightened my grip on the door handle and hesitated.

It was then that Cecilia pulled the other door open. Something flew past me at head height, something mostly dark, a blur of fur. I managed somehow to stop myself falling over backwards onto the gravel, straightened up, stared into the empty van for a second then jerked round to see where the blur had gone.

It was standing in the middle of the lawn.

A big dog. A very, very big dog.

‘Barrie, look at that gorgeous mane. Have you ever seen anything like that? Don't you think it's like a lion's?'

I did.

The Lion-Maned Dog stood, a solid, motionless mass, in the middle of the lawn, four feet planted on the grass, squashing the daisies. He stood there, staring.

I had started the rescue work because I loved dogs, especially big dogs, and German Shepherds (the breed that used to be known as Alsatians) in particular. Before me stood a magnificent example of that breed.

He was not looking around to see where he had been brought to, as I would have expected. He was looking at me. If it is possible for a dog to have a glint in his eye, then this dog did. He stared at the pale-faced, bespectacled male with middle-age spread, and I could tell what he was thinking. He didn't see me as a challenge.

I can't do this, I thought. But I had to. I had a dog to whom I was a stranger, a guard dog out of a car breakers' yard, with no name and no collar and no lead and somehow or other I had to get hold of this dog and put him in one of our dog pens so that he and other people would be safe.

On a warm, sunny Tuesday afternoon our tiny village felt lazy and peaceful. No pedestrians and few vehicles had passed by since Cecilia's van had turned into the drive. This peace and stillness was what I needed. I knew enough to realise that the Lion-Maned Dog must not get agitated or excited. I needed him to remain calm. But what to do? I quickly ran through the alternatives in my mind.

There was only one thing I could do in the circumstances.

I spoke to him.

‘Good boy.'

I think I may have spoken to him too quietly: the Lion-Maned Dog apparently hadn't heard me tell him that he was a good boy. He remained standing motionless in the middle of the lawn.

When Dorothy and I would try to find a home for this dog later, breaking the news that he was a former guard dog from a car breakers' yard would not make him an easy choice for those seeking a family pet. As I stood facing the Lion-Maned Dog across the lawn I had to shut out of my own mind an image of the guard dog in our own local breakers' yard. Better not to think about how he would attempt to bend the bars with his teeth if customers approached his cage. The proprietor had once volunteered the information that German Shepherds had forty-two teeth and he thought his dog was trying to bite one person for every tooth.