He’ll only reoffend when he gets out, I said, but my wife just stood there with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face that left me with no doubts.
OK. Come on, Recidivist, I called. It was a name I had given him at six weeks old, knowing that dog-training was a lifelong process, with its ups and its downs. He bounded up to me, stamping his forepaws on my shoulders and greeting my face enthusiastically with glutinous slathers of hot wet dog-breath. Get off, I pleaded, capsizing against the front door for balance. And in self-defence. He’ll do it again, I muttered under my breath, he always does, as I attached the harness and chains to his head and chest. But there was no budging my wife. She just stood there in a posture of ferocity, glowering first at me, then at the vast peregrination of loose poo spreading across the Persian in front of the living-room fireplace, and back again. I had told her right from the start we shouldn’t get a cat. And I told you I wanted a Pekingese, her eyes seem to flash at the horse hybrid I had actually bought.
With that, I was out of there, leaving her to look for a solution. Bleach or some corrosive salts perhaps.
But I was right. No sooner did we get out on the street than Recidivist was at it again, on the grass verge right outside the neighbour’s gate. You know, the one who hides in the hedge, peering, the one with the shaking fist. Well, poor love, he’s got an upset stomach, I thought, meaning the dog, not the neighbour, who had much bigger problems of his own. I watched as the insult percolated through the grass, and half-heartedly pulled a plastic bag from my pocket, before taking off at quite a pace, shrugging my shoulders interrogatively, when the fist-shaking started down the path towards us. The dog was off down the road like a dose of salts, dragging me behind, because for all his size, he had a nervous disposition and had met the neighbour before.
Anyway, I had just been lulled into a state of complacency when he did it again, and there was no way of covering it up this time, as the offence had taken place in the middle of the zebra crossing, in three squatted stages, with me hauling at the chains for all I was worth. It nearly caused a six-car pile-up, and a man on a mobility scooter skidded through it all into a crossing patrol complete with schoolkids. Well, I did my usual, pulling out my plastic bag and gazing forlornly at the three spreading lakes of incontinence, one of which carried the fading imprint of tyre-tracks, but I could see that was winning me no friends, so I let the dog drag me off again at terminal velocity in defiance of the £1000 fine, the threat of which was stuck to most of the lampposts in the street. There was an atmosphere of opprobrium in the air, and obviously something much worse, so I let the dog pull me through the park at breakleg speed, and out the other side, eventually leading me back to the house and through the gate at the rear, once he had fully dried out, of course.
And who should we find in the garden but my wife, pegging the cat on the line, dripping wet and stiff as a board, straight from the washing machine? It’s him or me, she said. Hoping to lessen her evident displeasure, I responded by saying, oh it was definitely him, and narrowly escaped a washing-pole wielded with both accuracy and extreme violence.
This is all your fault, I said, admonishing Recidivist severely, as he pinned me to the ground in sheer joy. Fancy a cup of tea? I ventured apologetically from my position of disadvantage. I took the snort of derision to mean yes. In the absence of any other clues to go by.