Home life
If dogs could fly
Alice Thomas Ellis
Alfie went all limp again the other morning. There were several reasons for this. First he couldn't find the mop bucket. Then he stood and watched me preparing lunch. At the moment I am sick to the back teeth of preparing lunch. I think it's the fault of the weather, for whenever I have gone to the trouble of fooling about with health-giving asparagus or artichokes then the family members are either lying in the park or in the sun.or have had an ice-cream on the way home.
So there I was washing the Jerseys and getting more bored by the minute when I had a good idea. What, I thought to myself, if I put them together with some water in the salad spinner and gave them a whirl? I was doing this when Alfie appeared and questioned me as to my movements. When I explained he went all limp. I don't know why. I still think it would have been a good idea if I'd had the strength to spin the spinner — the resist- ance of the water made it difficult, but some of the mud did come off.
He had just pulled himself together when I asked him about the dog — or rather Dog. A week or so ago I met the smallest dog I'd ever seen and now I speak of the largest. He is the dog of Eric, our newsagent, and more or less the same size as a two-seater sofa (Alfie is his sort of dog-father). A huge mastiff, his ancestors were kept by the Romans to eat Christians in the arena and Carlos looks as though he could manage several without much trou- ble. The other day he and his companion, Tosca, were invited to appear on television to take part in a programme about the allegedly dangerous nature of large dogs. Eric maintains that his two are as gentle as iambs and preparatory to the programme he took them upstairs for a wash. Upstairs to the second floor he took them, where a window stood open. Unthinkingly Carlos took off from the doorway, hurdled the sill and landed in Parkway, 40-odd feet below. Everyone assumed that he must have killed himself, but all that happened was that he broke the knuckles in a front paw. It is probably relief but now, every time we mention the Dog, Alfie goes into hysterics. You can perhaps see why. 'Dangerous?' says Alfie, 'Not unless they drop on you from a great height.'
Then he attempts to imagine the reac- tion of somebody leaving the pub on the corner as Carlos floated down before his eyes. 'He'd take the pledge,' says Alfie, who by this time is sitting on the floor sobbing uncontrollably. 'He'd take to reli- gion.' It seems that when Carlos landed he lay with all four legs splayed out, like a bearskin rug — not surprisingly in a state of shock. It took a great many people to lift him and was amazingly difficult. He had to be manoeuvred in and out of doorways, up and down stairs when they arrived at the vet's, and finally on to a table which was unusually tall because the vet was too.
At this point Alfie has to be revived with hot sweet tea, after which he feels strong enough to impersonate the vet lookng among her implements for a syringe of sufficient size, and enough sedative to render Carlos comatose. In a mistaken attempt to calm him I ask what precise breed of dog Carlos belongs to. 'He's a Neapolitan mastiff,' says Alfie in between hiccups. 'They're very rare . . .' and I practically have to administer brandy be- fore he is able to add `. . . but not as rare as they might have been.'
He had to go home after that and I carried on peeling the potatoes.
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