Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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6.4.05 Dispatch 33. Dog Is My Co-Pilot: A Life In Hounds

The first dog I ever had was a black-and-tan collie cross named Peppy. That was short for Peppina, because I was reading The Count of Monte Cristo at the time and thought the name Peppino was just swell. Boy was I shocked when we went up to Maine on vacation, and the three other dogs on the island were all named Peppy. I had no idea Dumas was so popular among lobster-fishermen. But what did I know; I was only ten.

Peppy was a lovely girl, happy and loyal. We had her for a good couple of years, then one day, just after a bath when her collar was still off, she disappeared. Mom blamed herself for Peppy's loss. She should have never taken Peppy's collar off. She should have insisted that Dad look for her. (She was taking a shower at the time, and asked Dad to go look for the dog. Dad couldn't be bothered, saying, "don't worry, she'll come back". But she never did.) The gardens went unweeded, and the house descended from its usual hospital-sanitized level of cleanliness as Mom put flyers up, drove the neighbourhood streets calling her, and toured round every animal shelter in a 50-mile radius for months. It was no use. Peppy had vanished like a rainbow in dry air. Once I thought I saw her, fur rippling in the breeze and grinning happily, in the back of some kids' jeep turning onto Route 1.

While Mom had been scouring the local animal shelters for Peppy, she noticed one little red terrier who was always huddled, shivering, on his cement kennel floor every time she came back. The shelters in Pennsylvania would only keep animals for 30 days, and if nobody adopted them by then, the dog or cat would be put down. But every time Mom came back over the next three months, there was that little terrier. Mom's curiosity was piqued. She asked the SPCA chief about him. The chief said that the dog's owners refused to come claim their dog, but because the SPCA knew who the owners were, they couldn't put him down. "Do you want to see him?" the chief asked, a note of desperation in his voice. My mother, her heart melting with pity for the poor, unloved little dog, said, "sure". The SPCA chief opened the kennel door. The terrier took a deep breath, inflating with machismo, strutted straight up to the chief's desk, and peed all over it.

That's how we ended up with Ferkel. Mom was too embarrassed to refuse the dog after it had gone and done what it did. Dad was not thrilled to find we had added another pet to the menagerie (which at that time made it one dog, six cats and a couple of budgerigars), and it was Dad who named him: "piglet" in German. Ferkel snorted and snored louder than most humans, never mind his own species.

He was a trial. My mother bore with him, as if he were some karmic punishment for leaving Peppy's collar off that morning long ago. Unlike Peppy, who had never run away until she did, Ferkel had an escape obsession. If you let Ferkel off the lead, he'd make like a bullet for a neighbour's chicken farm. I was the only one who could catch him, and I'd have to hightail it, usually barefoot, across half the county until he slowed down and I could pounce on him. The years didn't quench his attempts to re-enact The Colditz Story.

Ferkel died of old age while I was at college. After him, my parents remained dog-free for a long time. We still had cats, but even those got down to numbers similar to what normal families had. Mom was then working at Dad's company, on top of keeping the house, cooking, and gardening, so she was pretty tired most of the time and I don't think she had the energy for a dog.

The next dog in the family would be the first animal I had ever taken care of completely by myself. Sure, I'd had pets before that were "mine", while living with my parents. There was Holly, my first cat, the Lady Snowblood of the feline set. Holly's jaw had been set badly after she had played chicken with a '75 Pontiac on Route 276 (she lost, but not by much). This war wound gave her a lifelong drooling problem, but didn't stop her bringing us gifts of the slaughtered corpses of all God's little woodland creatures, up to and including weasels. Perhaps her ability to take on weasels was augmented by her getting my left-over cereal milk every morning, milk laced with the teeth-jangling amounts of sugar that only a six-year-old can appreciate.

Then there was Willy, a starving grey and white kitten that Mom and I and a carpool full of kids found at a convenience store when we stopped off to get Tasty-Kakes. When we took him in, Willy was a bag of bones, and throughout all years with us, he addressed every meal as if it were his last. Willy grew to be a ponderous, affable, Pennyslvania Dutch farm-boy of a cat, second to none in the art and enjoyment of sleep. And of course Peppy was "mine", and the budgerigars were "mine", in that childhood sense of "mine" which actually means "Mom does all the work, and you get all the affection".

But in Hong Kong in autumn 1996, I sorely needed affection. I had just broken up with a real beaut of a boyfriend, and was moping around the office grumbling that I needed to meet a new guy. One of my colleagues fixed me with a calm, level stare and said: "Alex, you don't need a new boyfriend. What you need is a good hunting dog." I decided this sounded like reasonable advice, and went down to visit the RSPCA shelter in Causeway Bay near the Yacht Club. Just to look, I told myself. Wasn't going to rush into this. No siree. Just. Looking.

Twenty minutes later, I came out with an armful of little red hound. Enter Charlotte. I reckon she wasn't more than 12 weeks old. Her long nose and big floppy ears lent credence to the shelter's claim she was half Dachsund, but she grew to the size of a small Labrador. Her other half was probably wild Hong Kong pi-dog, but for years her graceful demeanour led Mom to insist that Charlotte was actually some exotic purebred, like a Hungarian Viszla. Recently I've been able to negotiate Mom down to admitting that Charlotte might be more like a Rhodesian ridgeback mix. I haven't been able to budge Mom on her fondly-held beliefs that a family great-grandfather was a cousin of the pretender to the throne of Spain, or that we are related to Samuel Clemens. Someday I'll convince her that there's no shame in being part pi-dog.

I'm consumed with guilt about the way I raised Charlotte. I loved her, but I didn't really know what I was doing. Sometimes I got so frustrated cleaning puppy-shit off the carpet that I wanted to scream. But somehow, despite all my hamfisted care, she grew up to be a great dog: quiet, affectionate, happy. We went running together on Bowen Road, and I started spending nights at home with her in preference to the desperate, clandestine competition of Lan Kwai Fong's club scene. There is something about the unequivocal devotion of a dog to its owner. Even though having a dog is time-consuming and expensive and stops you from doing whatever you want when you want, it means that always, on some level, you have a friend and companion who, whatever everyone else may feel about you, and however much you fail in other things, thinks you're just great.

In late 1997 when my company unexpectedly moved me from Hong Kong to Manila, I sent Charlotte home to my parents. I felt like this was an admission of defeat, but Mom was more than happy to take Charlotte. She spoils Charlotte, giving her corners of toast in the morning, tucking her into her basket at night. In return, Charlotte patiently listens to Mom explain the nuances of her garden: how this rhododendron needs to be moved over there, and why those rudbeckia really weren't such a good idea. When I come home to visit, Charlotte still remembers me, and gives me a huge welcome. She regards me now, lying on the cool floor with her front paws crossed, elegant and sphinxlike.

Now I share my life and my flat with Hebe, a Sussex Spaniel who combines the dual virtues of single-minded loyalty and utter slothfulness. My ex-husband and I got her, a chubby, sleek seal of a pup, after our first year of marriage. He wanted a gun-dog, so Hebe was technically "his", but I ended up doing all the work. That year was like stumbling through some secret, one-way passage into the sour part of adulthood. I'd always wanted a car, a house, a good job, a church wedding with a white dress, a husband. You know. The stuff girls are supposed to want. And one day I found myself the possessor of all these things, along with a mountain of dirty dishes, a garden to weed, a dog to walk, dinner to cook, mortgages and loans to pay, renovations to do, and no help with any of it. But I think I did a better job raising Hebe than I did with Charlotte, and in that year of death by inches I clung to this little success.

When we separated - an inevitability ironically triggered by his broken promise to take me to visit a rescue dog I sponsor - I ended up with Hebe. Not through any nefarious plan, just that a dog requires a lot of taking care, and my ex was busy with other things. He got a new girlfriend pretty quick. I still have the hunting dog.

[Durham, New Hampshire April 2005]

( 11:29 PM )

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