With time we realised that years did not equate to maturity with a corresponding improvement in Arnold's behaviour; but simply mitigated his naughtiness instead of leaving it behind as an affliction of puppyhood. Due to the increasing rancid stench of our brown dog Tess, whose severe and unresolvable body odour problem was not improving, we became reluctant to allow the dogs inside. On the rare occasions we did, her stench would impregnate the atmosphere within minutes and would remain in the room long after she'd left.
With desperation being the catalyst for resourcefulness, Tess and Arnold had discovered for themselves a whole new space under the house. In the area directly below the kitchen they could hear the sound of our footsteps above, inhale the aroma of food through the floorboards and still feel connected to their pack.
The dogs were washed infrequently, due to their reluctance to co-operate and due to our indifference to washing them. Notwithstanding the benefits of a good washing with copious quantities of shampoo and flee lotion, Tess would develop her recidivist pungent stench by the following day. Arnie, on the other hand, in spite of his filthy appearance, bore no foul and inexplicable odour. He was simply a dirty dog, who would coat himself like a lamington in dust and grit as soon as he was washed by rolling about in the soft dirt under the house.
The dogs were washed infrequently, due to their reluctance to co-operate and due to our indifference to washing them. Notwithstanding the benefits of a good washing with copious quantities of shampoo and flee lotion, Tess would develop her recidivist pungent stench by the following day. Arnie, on the other hand, in spite of his filthy appearance, bore no foul and inexplicable odour. He was simply a dirty dog, who would coat himself like a lamington in dust and grit as soon as he was washed by rolling about in the soft dirt under the house.
Tess and Arnie found solace in their subterranean apartment where their bodies had etched personal indentations into the soft, dry earth in which they slept. It was their very personal space, rustic, private and inaccessible to us. It was a place that gave them shelter from the searing summer sun, peace from the hideous flies attracted by cattle that weren’t grazing in our backyard, and comfort from the chill of winter. In the case of the stubborn yellow eyed Tess, it was a space that guaranteed her privacy should she wish, as she often did, not to be disturbed. No amount of coaxing or trickery could make her surface and if she sensed bath time on the agenda, she chose not to be disturbed.
On rare occasions the dogs were invited inside and Tess would trot happily around the kitchen in her quest to procure any food resting tantalisingly near the edge of the kitchen bench tops - which she could very easily reach. The giant snout, the 'Schnoz', had a mind of its own and seemed to work independently of the rest of her body. It was at least the driving force behind everything she did. The Shnoz was so called with affection and was up there with some other frequently used and equally ridiculous names, such as Schnodge, Schnodule and Foofy. There was never no more sniffing to be done and even in her sleep her olfactory sensors were acutely tuned to the scents of her evironment, her brown rubber snout rhythmically undulating and twitching in response.
In spite of her body odour, she was a dear and gentle creature who possessed more that her share of strangeness. On more than one occasion she managed to strike fear into the hearts of those who witnessed her peculiarities without fully understanding them; turning their legs to jelly when their survival instinct beseeched them to flee.
In the presence of a group of our friends or family, Tess would often display a frightening habit of fixing her gaze upon one unsuspecting victim. She would then drop her huge dog head and with piercing yellow eyes, continue to stare. The unwitting recipient of her attention could be excused for thinking death or disfigurement were near - to be delivered by the enormous jaws of a deranged Ridgeback. Knowing her history as we did however, we were comfortable that the mysterious and trancelike state was attributable to either of two explanations. The most likely one was simply, tiredness.
The other possibility was that as a puppy Tess had frazzled her brain by lying in front of the heater for too long. When she did get up to move away or at least try to, her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap of loose velvet skin. In retrospect, I felt a tinge of guilt for assuming that an over-heated puppy would of course move away from the source of its discomfort. Had I been more vigilant, the over-heating incident might have been avoided. I would continue to wonder if it had caused permanent damage which contributed to her strangeness in later years, or whether that strangeness was inevitable given the environment in which she was raised.
However, the most probable cause of her odd trance-like behaviour was simply the overwhelming tiredness. Tess was affected by tiredness like no other dog I've known. The instant of actually succumbing to sleep, was often preceded by a catatonic trance. When the tiredness was upon her it would consume her very being, weakening the muscles that supported her huge head; reducing her to a state of mental incoherence from which there was no turning back. Typically, she would circle seven or eight times, lowering her huge body to the ground with an ungainly lack of aplomb. Totally devoid of poise and grace, her head would collapse with a thud to the floor even before the circling manoeuvre had run its course, as if suddenly devoid of muscle control. She would then pass out for hours at a stretch.
Although her lapse into the catatonic trance and resultant yellow-eyed stare may have looked threatening to the untrained eye, the probability that she was sizing up a prospective victim for death or disfigurement was simply not an option for those who knew her as we did and had observed her odd behaviour over the years.
While Tess’s party trick was inadvertently terrorising our guests, Arnie had a different agenda that reflected his standing as the village idiot. When allowed indoors, he would run so quickly with excitement from one end of the house to the other that his back legs would overtake the front, his fat body would become hunched, and his back end would travel dangerously close to the ground. At the point where he would run out of space, he would execute his compact U-turn, and continue in the opposite direction. He would do this until he had calmed down, or was thrown outside, whichever came first. Usually, it was the latter.
A wide staircase of only three steps joined the split levels of our dining and lounge rooms. By the time Arnie hit the landing at the top, he had gathered enough momentum to launch himself from the dining room floor, his body gliding gracelessly through mid air between the TV and the couch, before landing with a thud half way across the lounge room. For reasons best known to himself, he took great delight in performing this stunt. It was the party trick for which he was most renowned and it would inevitably elicit a varied response from each of us. The kids, so accustomed to it, would nonchalantly move their heads to re-establish their line of vision to the TV as the almost streamlined body of the normally fat black dog momentarily eclipsed the screen. It seemed as if through a sudden and surreal dislocation of time and space the dog was captured for an instant as an image on the screen, then just as suddenly, released back to reality without disrupting the continuity of his action.
Patrick, outraged by the rude and brazen behaviour of the animal, would simply throw him out. And in the case of the visiting teenage boyfriend who happened to be sitting on the couch watching TV when Arnie’s body sailed gracelessly by, temporarily obscuring the screen, we all became weak with laughter at his ingenuous response when he exclaimed with wonder and admiration, words to the effect of “Awwwwwh! Cool!”
One winter, a neighbour gave us two dog coats she no longer needed for her cocker spaniel. Someone she knew had evidently taken the trouble to make these by hand and to make them so hugely oversized that they resembled more closely a horse blanket.
However, we attempted to dress our dogs in them – for the sake of warmth. Arnie and Tess looked stunning in their new winter collection. The garment was more like a cape that tied about their necks and under their bellies. Tess, in spite of having been the object of our moments of longing to see a dog dressed in various items of human attire and photographed for posterity took instant exception to the dog coat; proceeding without delay to tear the evil thing from her body in a disturbing frenzy, a feat she accomplished within seconds. Arnie graciously allowed himself to be adorned in his new robe and ran and leapt about excitedly. The faster he ran, the more it cracked behind him like a sheet in the wind. Whether in an attempt to flee in sheer fright from the thing, or whether it somehow made him feel like a caped superhero, he ran and leapt with a maniacal energy he rarely displayed.
We eventually concluded that Arnie, like Tess, was far from comfortable in the supposed dog coat and in the end, weak with laughter at his expense, it was once and for all time removed from his body and from our house.
It would be many years later when prompted by the effects of winter temperatures on our ancient and threadbare Ridgeback; that we finally found a dog coat she would happily wear. It would be many years after that when Arnold, as an old man whose thick coat was no longer enough to ward of the winter chills, had became the proud owner of one very sophisticated and stylish doggy coat - complete with pockets, studs and a Velcro strap under his belly to hold it in place. The coat made him look so distinguished and discerning that it came to be known as the 'Sherlock Holmes' coat and caused us to speculate that Arnold may well have spent his dotage in solving mysteries.
