Pets -- for 'Gallery'

Over the years here we have had several dogs as I've mentioned elsewhere in these pages. Sputnik has been with us since we found him in June – a starveling staggering along beside the road. Since, he's  gained hugely in weight, confidence, and personality.

Stumpy, our long-cherished three-legged cat, still has no idea why we introduced this bumptious canine into his heretofore peaceful routine. And still has no time for him, rebuffing every good-natured Sputnik overture with a hiss and a slash of his remaining front leg – generally a failure as he can't keep his balance and ends up on his face.

Lucky, on the other hand, is delighted to have a playmate and takes no account of their size difference when she pummels, chases, and plays with him.

Sputnik amuses us endlessly with his snores, his outre sleeping positions, his engaging expressions. He guards our house from snakes and feral dogs, plumbers, gamekeepers, and men who come to measure for guttering. Best Beloved (in typical grumpy Cypriot fashion) still can't figure out what posessed me to stop the car and pick him up; but even he, I suspect, enjoys Sputnik from time to time.

‘Bye, Liz

I think we’ve lost the dog.

Every morning without fail, her cheerful, optimistic grin has met me at the door when I get up. This morning, silence greeted me. No whines, no wiggles of joy, no rushed clicking of nails on stone.

Usually I feed her before I feed Alex, then when he’s gone off to work I potter in the field – weeding here, cutting there, picking for an order if there’s one due – and scolding Lizzie when she rolls in the flat leaf parsley or pounces on a lizard in the chard. This morning I, alone, chased the goats out of the roses.

I called her, and when Zenon got up, I sent him out to scour the area, but silence met his calls as well.

Perhaps she ran off, though I don’t think so; she was happy here and seldom strayed far from the verandah. Perhaps someone nicked her, but I don’t think so; who’d want a silly yellow bitch with little brain but a sweet nature and a big smile? I heard hunters pass this morning – at least the yelping of a dog that I assumed to be a hunter’s woke me just as dawn was breaking – but she was no hunting dog, and I doubt very much that she got swept up by a passing pack of hounds.

No, I think that she took poison – or ate a poisoned animal, a rat or a bird – and crawled off somewhere to die a miserable death alone. Not that anywhere near here we have the plague that has carried off so many pets – a vindictive neighbour that doesn’t like barking, someone who’s fed up with cats turning out their garbage – who puts down Lanate-baited meat.

We put rat poison in the carob tree a month ago when Sophia , while cleaning her room, found a rat in her drawer. (Snakes usually provide adequate rat control outside – this is the first time we have used poison – but finding one in the house was a symptom of a situation out of control, and I took it to the local snake farm, but that’s another story), and some people in the area poison fruit to get rid of magpies (we shoot them), so I think that Lizzie ate a dead or dying animal. A cat won’t, and Stumpy was what I had in mind when we tacked the bait to the carob tree well out of reach of pets and children. But a dog is less discriminatory in what it eats, and my brother-in-law found Mili’s dog vomiting the other day and rushed her to the vet in time to save her. It didn’t occur to me to worry about Lizzie, and now regrets are too late.

She was with us only a short time, but she filled a space that now echoes.

Lizzie

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We have acquired a dog… again.

Last week I was driving up from the main Paphos to Limassol road to our village, and just when the road began its series of S-bends to reach the first plateau a small golden bitch ran out into the road and began frantically dashing up and down the centre line. I slowed to a crawl, she went out in front of me, then ran back to the other side almost under the wheels of an oncoming car that stopped with a screech. Desperate, searching, she ran to the side of the road, so I … pulled to the hard shoulder and called her. And she came. Timid, yet almost delirious with joy, she jumped into the front seat and we drove home.

Best Beloved was clipping the row of vines that line the concrete road after the turn off, and as I slowed down to talk to him, his gaze drifted to my new companion.

“No!” he said. “Not another Pathetic Life Form”

“It’s all right,” I reassured him. “I’ll take her to the Shelter on the way to drama class.”

But both Zenon and Sophia fell in love with her, and even I – who don’t like dogs as a rule – was a little smitten. She was quiet and well behaved, yet a happy, benign presence.

We took her to the Shelter as promised, but I said to Annie, the custodian, “I’m tipping that I’ll be back for her in a week…”

Best Beloved and I talked about keeping her over the next few days. We have a fundamental difference of opinion about animals. He doesn’t like pets, tolerating dogs – except working dogs – hardly at all, and certainly not in the house. I grew up with pets, and although I’m not partial to dogs, believe that keeping a dog in a cage – all the responsibility but none of the joy – is wrong. On the other hand, Cyprus is a hot place in the summer and dog smell and dog hair in the house is not very pleasant.

We tried a few dogs that found us and we kept because Zenon’s pleas moved us to ‘try just one more time’. Sam the Beagle was beautiful, stoic, great with Zeen, and thick as two planks. He went to the shelter after an unmanageable month. Lucy the Border collie was bright and beautiful – so bright that she could not cope with loneliness in the pen where we kept her, and drove us nuts with her barking. We re-homed her with a nice English family who gave her all the love and attention that she demanded.

We decided to stay petless – until Lizzie, that is.

Mili’s smaller dog having died last summer, Mili had a vacant pen, so she agreed that we could move it to our land for Lizzie. Nepalese L came Saturday and spent the morning levelling ground in a shady spot under a carob tree close to the house, and building a platform so that the winter rain will not flood her out, then with great ceremony he, Best Beloved, Alex, and I moved the pen into its new position and secured it.

On Sunday, I drove to the shelter to collect her and bring her home.

She has settled in quickly. Exuberant with the children and me, she takes us for walks in the early morning or at dusk; respectful to Best Beloved, she has earned his grudging ‘I suppose she’s not bad for a dog!’

Let’s see how it all works out.