Alex the Wonderdog doesn’t like to walk. It has been widely documented on this blog about this utter lack of enthusiasm in putting one paw in front of the other. Licking piss off a lampost: yup, he’ll do that. Barking at the postman: yup, check that too. But walkies is something that literally has him shaking with canine terror. It’s not that he’s got bad paws – he certainly runs in circles when he wants his dinner. It’s just he just doesn’t like walking. I’ve tried everything to no avail. And he’s certainly got a lot worse since he was attacked by that mastiff earlier in the year.
So anyway, this morning was his usual walkies and I do like to keep him moving. If Alex had his way he’d just veg out on the sofa and grow fat. But no, I am not going to let him do that. We are walkies…and that’s that. And so I drag the little white immovable object for all I am worth. It is quite a strain because he is literally pulling me backwards, back home while I move forwards. If I turn around and head home, he is literally running ahead of me to get back to his sofa.
We turn into Chester Road and I notice some shifty looking bloke jumping out of a dirty white saloon car with a “A dog’s for life, not just Xmas” sticker in the back window. He is scurrying from house to house doing a “charity collection” of unwanted clothes and bric-a-brac. I think nothing of him and pass him by, dragging the dog. We walk past the empty bus stop and the white car pulls up right beside me. My spidey senses tingle and I think that he probably just wants directions. He winds down the window and beckons me over. I frown as if to say “What?” and he beckons me again. So I remove one earphone from my ear and lean into the car window, expecting him to ask where Mannock Drive is or something.
Him: Here mate, you ought to get a harness for your dog, otherwise you are going to damage his neck the way you are dragging him along.
Me: Thanks, and you want to mind your own business.
And so the day I was worried about has come. I did say to The MIssus that it wouldn’t be long before some plucky do-gooder would tell me how to walk the dog properly. I said that I would hand them the lead and tell them to have Alex if they thought they could do a better job. But when push comes to shove, I didn’t want to hand over my pet because even though he’s not like normal dogs and he’s lazy and he doesn’t want to walk and he makes the most terrible smells and he can be aggressive and surly and awkward and difficult, he’s still my best friend.
And to say I was incandescent with rage was an understatement…grrrr…Smash, destroy – Hulk smash puny human…grrr…
The irony of all this was that at the weekend I was at the pet megamart looking for a harness for Alex the Wonderdog and they didn’t have any leather harnesses in stock, so I had to buy a new collar to replace the one that was falling off his fat neck. Ooooooh….

« »