The Ballad of Pickle and Parker, or How I Fell in Love

They say a dog is a man’s best friend. Well, Nicola, Sarah, Emma, Mel, Neil, Gemma and Andy are my best friends, and what’s more they don’t shit on the carpet and whine outside my bedroom door for food at 5.30 a.m.**

It was all Emma’s fault. She started it. She got a beagle called Poppy, and there was something so intoxicating about the constant exhaustion, commitment and inability to have a second to oneself that it made me want one of my own.

I’m nothing if not impulsive, so the following week my sister and I duly headed to the same breeder in Cheshire – a redoubtable woman called Janet, all flush-faced and tweedy. She was the sort of woman who displayed rosettes on the wall rather than family photos, and who just might have kept a Shetland pony in her living room. I suspect she would have found even a no-nonsense approach a little frilly for her tastes.

I had barely set foot through Janet’s door when I was greeted with the now-familiar gust of wet dog and Dettol. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a miniature pinscher thundered towards me and began making breakfast of my trouser leg.

Janet:	You all right?
Me:	Yes, thank you.
Janet:	Well shut t’ bloody door then.
Me:	Oh yes, sorry.

She sizes me up for a few seconds while the dog yaps incessantly at my heels.

Janet:

Will you BE QUIET, Jasper! [To me] See there, over t’ way?

She motions across the street with her free hand, the other attempting to wrestle the dog’s jaws from my ankle.

Me:	Yes …
Janet:	Little bastard over there, hangs himself from the beams every night, watching me.
Me:	Really? Your neighbour … hangs himself?
Janet:	Auto-erotic something. I don’t know. Dirty bugger. I just shut me curtains. Out of sight and all that. Do what he likes then. I don’t mind. Anyway, come and meet Prunella.
Me:	Prunella?
Janet:	The bitch. Now mind yourself down t’ stairs – they’ve gone to shit.

I wander into a field behind the house, towards a large enclosure. I honestly have no clue what I’m looking for. I’ve never had a dog before, so the idea of looking for something more than just the standard four legs, tail and face, is totally new to me.

Janet:

Right. Pups are only couple weeks old, so don’t go near ’em. You can have a peak through int’ kennel, but more than that and I’ll give you what for.

I peer through the wooden slats and the effect is instant. My skin slackens, my eyes widen and what feels like the distillation of a million Disney films starts working simultaneously on my heartstrings. Even the usually pragmatic Michelle stands there for half an hour with her hand over her mouth, entranced.

Janet:	They’ve all gone, been sold – bar t’ little one. Runt. We’ve had to bottle-feed her, but she’s right as rain now. You want me to put tha name down or what?
Me:	Yes.

I speak without thinking. It’s not a conscious response. All rationality has left the building. In fact, from that point on rationality never returns.

Janet:

Right. Back in a month then. I’ll show you t’ door. I said MIND T’ STEPS!

When I returned four weeks later I was once again led to the field outside, to the wooden hut where I’d first seen the litter.

I waited in silence with Janet, even though I had no idea what I was waiting for. It would have made for the most tedious episode of Springwatch ever recorded, that’s for certain. Finally, after many minutes, a single pup emerged, stretching and yawning as she hit the daylight.

‘Ooh, here she comes. She knows she’s for you all right. Come here, girl.’

With one motion, she scooped up the dog, who was so small she fitted on her outstretched hand. She stayed there, surfing Janet’s palm, legs wobbling to the sides and outsize ears flapping in the breeze, giving the horizon that bored thousand-mile stare that I would come to know and love.

‘Right, here you are …’

Whereupon Janet transferred her into my hands, this little warm thing that smelled of milk and sawdust. Eight weeks old. 2.26 kilos.

The exact weight of love.

Janet, meanwhile, had taken a large pair of what looked like bolt cutters and was trimming the dog’s nails as she wriggled in my arms. I had no idea what on earth to do next. It was a singularly odd sensation. I’d never been in love and not known what to do about it.

Me:	What … what do I do?
Janet:	Don’t look at her, touch her, do owt for her – she’s a dog – not a human. Be strict with the little bugger.

She turns to the dog.

Janet:

Right you, don’t give me that look. I’m glad to be shot of you. Needy, you were, terribly needy. Go on and piss off, and don’t be a pain. Don’t give her grief, like you’re wont to. Go on.

As she turns away from us, I see a single silvery tear making its way down her cheek.

I put Pickle, as she was to be known, in the car, in a crate like I’d been told, and instantly knew I’d done wrong. She gave me a look – the sort of look that Damian gave his nanny in The Omen just before she hangs herself from the light fitting. I know now this was Pickle’s first attempt at mind control. She became much more effective at it over the eleven years she allowed me to live with her. Within a minute I’d buckled. She was out of the crate and in my sister’s arms, and from that moment on it didn’t matter what grate or luggage rack or obstacle blocked her way – she would always find a way to barge through from the boot onto the passenger seat. That was her seat. She was the co-pilot.

Once home, I tried to give her boundaries – NO to the sofa, NO to the bed, NO to my entire dinner – but within a week of arriving at my house she merely had to flash me one of her celebrated withering looks before I’d be racing for the treats jar or rushing over to adjust the contours of her bedding for greater comfort. It wasn’t just mi casa su casa. It was my bed your bed, my food your food, my life your life. I would go to sleep with her curled at my feet and would wake to find her head on the pillow next to mine, paw over my shoulder, staring at me intently. She was the only creature I’ve ever met that was as wilful, stubborn and downright odd as I am.

Pickle redefined contrary. She would have broken Cesar Millan in a heartbeat. If there was something a dog was supposed to do, she refrained from doing it. It wasn’t that she overtly refused; she just found the request itself nonsensical. She didn’t come back when called or run for balls or play with other dogs. Why on earth would you want to do that? She would just sniff things, wee on them, then run off in the opposite direction everyone else was heading in.

If she was bored (heaven forbid), she would systematically destroy anything and everything I was fond of. If I watched too much telly, she’d eat her way through the cables. Problem solved. If I headed for the door without her, she would eye up the CD rack, and one by one would crunch the plastic cases between her jaws. Let me tell you from experience – Led Zeppelin and PJ Harvey sound exactly the same once a six-month-old hound has been at them.

Now I had a dog, I had to do the one thing I had avoided all of my life – exercise. I began walking on Hampstead Heath every day, and for the first time I got it. I got how beautiful it all was, you know – outside. I grew to appreciate the subtle shifting of colours and textures as one season greeted another. I started to love the reddy slush of autumn, the reassuring suck of December mud, the white winter sun struggling for definition in the white winter sky. And then I’d look forward to the fat spring grass and the paths slowly turning to powder in the heat of whatever summer we had.

It was a love affair. A love affair between me and my dog. And then it became a love affair between me and my dog and the Great Outdoors. And then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more goddam love, there came the biggest love of all.

And with her came another bloody beagle.

Parker.

I met Kate in the summer of 2003. We would occasionally bump into one other, and as we had friends in common we’d share the odd wander until our paths home diverged. That year there was an Indian summer, and I remember the sun stretching out across endless balmy evenings. The grass was high, and lovers, drunk on cheap fizzy plonk, rolled around on the margins of the meadows. By autumn we had started to arrange to meet, rather than relying on haphazardly finding one another. Once a week. Then twice. Then more. For an hour. Then two. Then more. By November we were walking four hours a day, seven days a week. Even the dogs were exhausted.

Something felt wrong. Very wrong. I phoned Michelle.

Me:	Gel, there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel right. I can’t sleep and I feel sick to my stomach. I just sit around …
Michelle:	Can I stop you there?
Me:	Is it gout?
Michelle:	It’s worse.
Me:	I’m in love, aren’t I?
Michelle:	I am rather sorry to say, yes, you are.

Two weeks later Kate turned up at my door with a plastic bag containing a toothbrush and her purse, and Parker on a lead. Nothing more. It was all we needed. It was perfect.

Parker was a rather different beast to Pickle. Whereas Pickle was mercurial and charismatic, Parker was lumbering and distinctly on the spectrum. Added to which her breath was a cross between closing time at Billingsgate and the mother alien in Aliens. If she licked you, you had to wash it off pronto, lest it burn your skin to the bone. But I loved her from the outset.

   We all just loved each other from the outset.