San Francisco home telling the LA Times that, at current growth, the shelter will be 50 per cent Chihuahuas within months. ‘Animal welfare workers are calling it the “Paris Hilton Syndrome” after the celebutante whose obsessive acquisition of handbag portable dogs has inexplicably encouraged their popularity among people who don’t actually house the mutts in chandelier-hung scale models of their Beverley Hills mansions.’*
For me, living an oddly itinerant lifestyle that involves my weekly commute from the home in the Peak District I call Wuthering Heights to Wuthering Depths, the slightly grim, somewhat Bohemian basement flat in London, a small dog is essential for ease of transportation. Nor have I ever really been fond of big, powerful dogs, and Rottweilers and Alsatians really rather scare me. My son Ed the vet (I always feel slightly ashamed when I say that; it’s like the old Jewish mother joke: she’s in the swimming pool watching her boy and shouts, ‘Help, help, my son, the doctor, is drowning!’) goes by the old Barbara Wood-house mantra – ‘there are no bad dogs, only bad owners’, but the only nasty experience I’ve ever had with a dog was during my childhood and the dog was an Alsatian.
Our local vicar, his wife and children lived in a huge, imposing Victorian vicarage, reminiscent of the scary house on the hill in Hitchcock’s Psycho, and he began by owning one Alsatian as protection against intruders which eventually, as seems to happen with real dog lovers, became two, then four and eventually they were the proud owners of six of the breed – all brought up around their children and seemingly well trained and with the most gentle and accommodating temperaments.
I became involved with the family as a result of my loosely Church of England mother – she never went to church herself, but seemed to think it essential for my moral development. She insisted I go to Sunday school and be confirmed. I doubt she ever predicted I would be drawn to a short period of religious mania – I adored the drama of the High Church services and revelled in the bells, smells, music, intoned poetry of the services and the delicious cadences of the King James Version of the Bible – but she was patently delighted that I began to ally myself as a friend with the vicar’s children rather than with the somewhat scruffy, ‘common’ (her word, not mine) oiks who raced around our street, spoke in broad Yorkshire accents and had little ambition apart from the kitchen or the pit.
The dogs would always be around the large garden as we played and were rarely averse to being dressed in old hats and cardigans or put into prams and pushed around. But one day, as we all appeared to be playing merrily, the two older males began their own scrap for no reason we could deduce. The girl in the family – Jane – my closest friend, a pretty child with translucent skin, turned-up nose and a much envied golden ponytail, decided the best policy was to intervene and separate the animals in case they hurt each other. The underdog immediately slunk away as she leapt between them, shouting, ‘Stop it, stop it now!’ The bigger and stronger of the two growled, jumped towards her, put its paws on her shoulders and tore into her lovely face.
It immediately seemed to realise it had made a terrible mistake, turned and ran away. The rest of us looked on in paralysed horror as Jane screamed in pain. Her parents ran out to see what had happened, bundled her into the car and drove off to the hospital. The plastic surgeons did their best, but there was always an angry scar at the side of Jane’s face, and the dog was put down. It was a salutary lesson in animal behaviour – the two should have been left to get on with their scrap – and I’m not sure I would ever entirely trust a dog with the size and power to create such havoc. Even now I shiver slightly if I see one approaching in the park.
Soon after, I stopped going there – I found it hard to cope with Jane’s misery at the damage to her face and never again felt quite comfortable with the remaining animals. Eventually, they left the area and I lost touch with them completely.
So, a small dog it had to be. Friends with whom I shared my longing met my wittering about a really little dog being just the ticket with universal astonishment. They even went so far as to say they didn’t see me as someone who would be so shallow as to mince about with a designer dog or ally myself with what they saw as nothing more than a yappy, irritating rat on a string.
Nevertheless I found myself drawn irresistibly to the ‘Chihuahuas for Sale’ personal ads every time I sat down at the computer and read everything I could lay my hands on about the nature of the breed. The more I read, the more convinced I became that this was the perfect companion for someone in middle age who was not as fit as she once had been. Easy to manage physically, maniacally devoted to their owner, too small to be around very little children, not too expensive to feed, generally enjoying robust health and happy to go on a long walk if that took your fancy or a slow stroll around the sitting room if you didn’t feel up to a morning of violent exercise.
There was only one problem. David was absolutely adamant that he did not want another dog. During our first few years together, when the Royal Navy owned his time and could send him on a tour of duty at a moment’s notice, it was I who took on the responsibility of looking after William and Mary and arranging childcare for Ed when he was a baby. It was David’s longing to be a hands-on father who didn’t have to be away for months on end that drove him to leave the service and, eventually, when trustworthy and affordable childcare became increasingly difficult to find, he decided to take on the children whilst I became the breadwinner. He’d had years where full-time care was his job. He now relished the freedom to go out if he wanted to without worrying about anyone else’s needs. And that obviously meant, no dog.
In our relationship of thirty years’ standing there has rarely been a major disagreement. We concurred on where to live, what kind of house we wanted, how to educate and discipline the boys, but this was becoming a serious problem. I didn’t want to bring a living creature into the house if he would not be able to welcome it, but I was almost tempted to think I’d prefer the dog to him! Dogs don’t do grumpy!
There’s a theory, set out in The Female Brain by an American psychologist, Louann Brizendine, that a post-menopausal woman loses her nurturing gene. She’s said to become selfish in a way she has never been before and no longer feels it necessary to shop, cook, clean and care for those around her. Her children are generally up and off and her husband or partner can stand on his own two feet.
I can testify that it is to some extent true in relation to children and partners. I did get to a point where I was only prepared to cook and wash clothes or dishes strictly on a rota basis, but somewhere, deep in my soul, was the need to have someone or something small, helpless and needy to look after.
And I was not alone. We went out to dinner one evening with Gaynor and Ernie, friends of our age who don’t have children together. It’s their second marriage and Ernie’s boys are grown up; Gaynor hasn’t had a child of her own. The conversation came round to filling one’s time as one approached late middle age. The guys were all for working less hard, finding their way around the golf course, being free, at the drop of a hat, to see the world. Gaynor and I could talk of nothing but a dog and possible arrangements for reliable and affordable dog care, should the need arise. The nurture gene was only too present in both of us. Unsurprising, I guess, as psychologists describe the need to nurture as an essential part of the human condition, giving the lie to what was obviously nonsense about the gene diminishing as a woman gets older. I felt it as keenly in my mid fifties as I had heard the ticking of my biological clock in my early thirties.
I begged for a puppy for Christmas. I know, I’m not so stupid as to think a puppy should ever be bought for Christmas – it’s after the festivities that so many end up in shelters, unwanted and unloved, when a family that has bought in haste begins to realise how much of a commitment a dog is. But I really thought they would see how much I seemed to need a dog and would give in and surprise me.
They seemed to find it amusing to watch me unwrap a robot puppy which walked around the floor, barked, whined, sat on command and was about as cuddly and comforting as
