A Dog’s Best Friend: The Secrets that Make Good Dog Owners Great

‘Reg, I won’t have you teasing him like that. It might be fun for you, but it’s not fun for the dog. How’d you like it?’

We all laughed, but I looked at Doreen’s face and saw she was utterly serious. From then on, I became fascinated by her relationship with her dog.

Doreen was a wonderful person and I always looked forward to seeing her, but the fact she had such a lovely dog made each visit even more special. Doreen was very strict about what we could and couldn’t do with her dog. Playing the retrieval games which Tinker enjoyed was fine. Taking him out for a walk without an adult, on the other hand, was not. ‘You’re not responsible enough to take a dog out,’ she said, which again was something new and radical for me. Back in the streets of West London, children routinely walked dogs.

Doreen was absolutely consistent in her approach, no matter who was involved. On one occasion, I remember my father and his brother, Doreen’s father, Fred, playing ‘piggy in the middle’ with a ball and Tinker as the increasingly agitated ‘piggy’. Doreen was upstairs, but the moment Tinker let out a distressed bark, she was bounding down the stairs.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asked them – it didn’t matter that it was her father and uncle involved, two of the senior figures in the family.

My Dad put an arm around her and asked her to lighten up a little.

‘Come on, Doreen, you think more of that dog than you do of us,’ he said.

But she was adamant. ‘He’s my dog and I’m going to treat him my way and I’m not having it, Uncle Wal.’ And that was that.

On another occasion, her daughter Diane was trying to put a doll’s bonnet on Tinker. Again there was no argument.

‘Stop that, you have dolls for that,’ Doreen insisted. ‘The dog is not there for your entertainment.’

Looking back, I can see that Doreen’s approach worked. As Tinker grew up, I couldn’t help noticing how much calmer he was than all the other dogs I’d come across. There was no rushing around, no barking and jumping up. I remember asking her one day, ‘How come Tinker’s so happy, Doreen?’

‘Because I haven’t made him mixed up like so many other people do,’ she said. ‘Other people’s dogs are so anxious all the time. No wonder, given the way people tease them and treat them badly. All I do is give some consideration to how he’s feeling.’

It was an attitude that was an extension of Doreen herself. She was the warmest, kindest person in my family. She was also someone who committed herself one hundred per cent to anything she did. To everybody else, ‘a dog was just a dog’. But to Doreen it was a living creature, with feelings, with a soul.

As Tinker’s training developed, so too did Doreen’s ideas. She used food rewards in a way I’d never seen anyone do before. For instance: ‘Tinker’s not going to do the right thing for nothing,’ she’d say. ‘He’s not stupid.’

My Uncle Fred would often see this and tell her she was spoiling him and turning him into a softie. ‘The dog should do it because you say so,’ he’d say.

She’d shoot him a look and reply: ‘You wouldn’t.’

As a young girl, sitting there on the fringes of all this, I remember thinking what common sense it sounded. But it was a long time before I understood what Albie and Doreen had instinctively sensed: that a dog was going to respond better if it was shown some respect and consideration, that you were going to have a better relationship by empathising with it, by trying to understand how it might feel to be in its position. It was a lesson worth waiting to learn.

THE TIES THAT BIND (#ulink_6ba92088-b154-5476-b719-772e7923d9c7)

Why great owners understand man’s special relationship with dogs (#ulink_6ba92088-b154-5476-b719-772e7923d9c7)

Like everything else nowadays, people have a tendency to overcomplicate their relationship with their dogs. Too often, I think, we forget that ours is a simple partnership that dates back tens of thousands of years, to the time when our ancestors first domesticated the wolf, Canis lupus, to create the dog, Canis familiaris. Back then, man and dog were bound by a deep and instinctive understanding of each other’s needs and nature. Man provided security, sanctuary, food and warmth; the dog provided its superior senses and hunting abilities. They shared a form of language and understood each other perfectly. They were a team, working intuitively together – and very successfully.

During the course of the millennia since then, man and dog have drifted apart. In the main, we have become strangers – rather than the best friends we like to call ourselves.

It has only been in recent years that I have begun to understand man’s special relationship with the dog, to unravel fully the nature of the language the two species once shared instinctively. That such special relationships existed, however, was something I’d learnt to appreciate a lot earlier.

Two chance meetings during my childhood loom large in the memory in this respect. The owners were very different, but both sowed significant seeds.

Sometimes the most influential encounters are also the briefest. So it proved during a summer’s camping holiday in Exmoor and Lorna Doone country back in the 1960s. I was with my parents and the first dog I’d ever been able to call my own, Shane – a beautiful tricoloured collie my father had bought at a kennels near Heathrow.

My father loved discovering country pubs and one lunchtime went to a beautiful one near the village of Oar – a picturesque spot, with views over the moor. It was a gorgeous day and we sat outside on benches. Shane found himself a comfortable spot under a tree, where he was soon quietly snoozing.

The pub was a magnet for locals and tourists alike. The local sheep market had been on that morning, so that afternoon the place was crammed with farmers and shepherds. Their Land Rovers and trailers filled the car park. It was a very friendly place. People would say hello as they went in and one or two of the farmers stopped to admire Shane. ‘That’s a lovely dog,’ one of them said, giving Shane’s neck a friendly ruffle.

Most of the farmers arrived alone, but one turned up with a lovely looking Border collie. I don’t remember the farmer’s name, but I do recall the dog’s – she was called Tina.

There was something about their relationship that struck me straight away. Tina looked at her owner with a focus and intensity that seemed unusual. I remember noticing that he barely needed to give her an instruction before she did exactly what he wanted. As he headed into the pub, for instance, he just said ‘stay’ and she was down on all fours, sitting passively on the grass.

The pair seemed to have a great understanding of each other. When he emerged again, he had a pint of beer and a clean ashtray, which he placed on the grass next to Tina. He then poured a small splash of beer into the tray. Tina was soon slurping happily away. What a perfect pair they made, I thought to myself.

With people arriving all the time, the tables were filling up fast. Soon the table next to ours was taken by a group of half a dozen or so farmers, including Tina’s owner. The air was soon heavy with farming talk – everything from lamb prices at that morning’s market to the quality of that year’s crops and the weather. They were soon engaging us in conversation as well.

‘So where did you get this handsome boy?’ one of them asked me.

I explained that we had got him from a kennels in West London.

The farmer told me he too had a Border collie.

‘So where’s he today then?’ I asked, surprised at his absence.

‘Oh, he’s a working dog. He stays on the farm where he belongs,’ he replied.

Tina’s owner was sitting opposite this man. I looked at him and said: ‘You’ve got your dog with you. You don’t agree, do you?’

‘No, I don’t, young lady,’ he said with a wink.

His friends were soon rolling their eyes heavenward. ‘Oh, here we go,’ said one.

Almost immediately, the other five farmers were taking it in turns to explain their difference of opinion over Tina. Each of them had collies, but each of them had left them back in their kennels on their respective farms. They simply didn’t believe that a working dog should be included in a farmer’s social life.

‘He’s made that dog too soft,’ one said, pointing at Tina.

‘She even goes in the house with him,’ said another.

Tina’s owner didn’t seem perturbed by this. He’d clearly heard it all before. But when everyone had had their say, he turned to me and explained his side of the argument.

‘The way I see it, Tina works hard for me every day. She does everything I ask of her and there’s nothing wrong with her switching off and enjoying herself with me every now and again,’ he said.

As the sun shone and the beer flowed, the conversation continued. It wasn’t aggressive – there were lots of smiles and winks – but there was no doubting that everyone was absolutely serious about their positions within the argument. It was one of those situations where no one was going to give ground. Tina’s owner was quite calm and relaxed about it all. The other five farmers were more agitated, but they weren’t yielding an inch, either. Everyone agreed to disagree.

At one point, as the argument continued, someone mentioned the fact that Tina competed very successfully in the local sheepdog trials. When I asked the other farmers whether their dogs competed, they all answered ‘yes’. ‘Tina’s got a knack for it though, and she usually wins,’ one of them grudgingly admitted.

‘So what about your dog then, young lady?’ one of the farmers asked, trying to deflect the subject for a while. ‘Do you work him at all?’

‘Oh no, he’s a pet,’ I said.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but I don’t think collies should be pets,’ one of the farmers said. ‘Their instinct is to herd and work, not sit around in a house all day.’

Until now my father had sat there, quietly chatting to my mother, but this comment clearly annoyed him and he couldn’t let it pass. By now both Shane and Tina were sprawled out under the shade of the trees, relishing the afternoon sun and oblivious to the fuss. My father pointed at them and said, ‘Look at those two. Does either of them look like they’re being mistreated?’

Although it was a good line and got a good laugh, it brought the conversation to a close. The farmers had soon set off on their way back to their farms, but the memory of that argument lingered for a long time afterwards.