Macgregor, my dog, was something of a living legend. This dog had always had a big personality for a small dog – a Jack Russell. Not as young as he used to be, a venerable fourteen and a half when he died, he still had the spring in his step of a much younger dog. When I first got him, as a puppy, he was small enough to sit in the palm of my hand.
I acquired him quite by accident because the couple who were going to buy him pulled out at the last minute. I happened to be at his breeder’s house when they rang to tell her they could not buy him. I originally tried to refuse, but then she let him out his pen. He scampered out and started trying to chase butterflies, and I simply fell in love. I took him away with me the same day. When we took him, I promised faithfully that I would not put him on the ground where he was in danger of picking up diseases, because he had not yet had all his injections.
We repaired to the local pub, where we put him on the table. It was one of those benches that is both seat and table in one. Whilst distracted by a duck fight at the end of the beer garden, we heard a slurping noise and found Macgregor almost doing a handstand in order to drink his way down a beer tankard.
A few months in to my relationship with him, I got up at 6 every day so I could exercise him before I left for work. We would walk then I put him in a pen between the house and the river, because we lived in a mill. He was penned in using an electric sheep fence. It was orange and it was plastic. He had about a quarter of an acre of garden, the river to drink from and his kennel to shelter in from rain or wind.
Every day we would say our fond farewells and he would bark his goodbye
all the way to the car. Despite hating leaving him alone, I would get in my car and go. A hard day’s work and I would return home, rush to his pen and there he would be. His entire body rocked to the wag of his tail and he grinned from ear to ear. I would reach over, pluck him out and lift him close for a cuddle. He would attempt to lick any part of me he could reach and the unmistakable smell of fish clung to his breath. This last fact always puzzled me. Yes, there were certainly fish in the stream, small trout to be precise, but he could never catch them, surely?! So why did his breath smell of it?
I came back from work a few weeks later and there was no sign of the dog. I searched everywhere, walking miles through the fields and woods, and up by the reservoir, where he often took himself for impromptu walks…nothing! I rang everyone I could think of who he might have gone to visit (he had a habit of going on small trips to friendly neighbours) – nothing. Finally, a friend,who had been accompanying me suggested ringing the police to see if he had been handed in for any reason.
Thinking it highly unlikely, I rang. That was when you could get the number for your local police station, rather than being connected to a call centre in Dagenham…I got through straight away, and as I was saying, “Have you, by any chance…” I heard him bark in the background, and said, somewhat surprised, ‘Oh! You have got him!” “Is he yours?” the voice asked. “Yes!” I said. “Describe him to me!” said the voice. So I did. There was a deeply drawn sigh and then the voice said, “PLEASE come and get him as soon as you can? I’ll explain when you get here…” I clattered the phone back in place and set off at a run.
Without breaking the speed limit, I arrived with my friend at the police station in approximately 8 minutes, having found a parking space right outside the door. We raced in, and could hear him in the background…‘Thank heavens!” said the policeman…’”he has been driving us nuts!”
It transpired that he was too small and skinny to stay in a dog pen, he just scooted through the bars. Consequently, the police had to put him in a people cell, which had sheet metal to waist height. Macgregor’s way of coping with this was to leap so he could see over the sheet metal, and assess what was going on. Trouble was, every time he got to the top of his leap, he barked. This had gone on, incessantly, for four hours. The police, by then, had had enough.
When we fetched him, we asked why he’d been brought in, and we slowly pieced together the truth…. Every time I left in the morning, he would wait for the sound of my engine to dwindle away to a murmur… When it did, he would find a spot that was a little less taut than others. Bearing with the pain of being repeatedly zapped by electricity, he would wriggle out underneath the fence. Once free of it, he shook himself off and trotted off down the road and into the high street. He then proceeded to force himself in through every cat flap (this was before the days of ones that only allow those with a chip under the skin of the cats concerned to enter). He guzzled his way through every dish of cat food in the street that had been left obligingly within reach… (hence the fish breath) until he was caught in the act. A deeply friendly dog, despite teeth far too big for his muzzle, he allowed himself to be scooped up and taken down the ‘yard’.
Macgregor came home that night happy, but with sore paws and a case of laryngitis that lasted a week…oh, and with a police record!
Caro Field Author 