This was Kevin’s response after an exchange which went like this
Kevin: It’s quiet now that she’s gone. It was like that when Mischa went home too.
Ine: I know. It’s a bit like being in Limbo.
Kevin: …
This is what I have to live with, folks. Feel sorry for me.
So here we are. Dog-less again. Today we took Amy to a doggie park next to Naschmarkt. Perhaps this was cruel of us… unlike Mischa she was not really great with unfamiliar dogs, though I half-way suspect it’s a size-thing. When going for walks, if she saw, or thought she saw, another dog she would freeze and flatten herself on the pavement. No amount of coaxing could get her past the offending object. She would be better with the littl’uns, or if the dog had its back turned, but anything approaching her own size or bigger would have her turn into a pillar of salt, flattened against the ground, refusing to budge. And though slimmer than Mischa, I believe she is heavier and stronger than him and I really struggled to get her to move on.
Anyway, we dragged her to a dog-park. Where there were several dogs of varying sizes who all wanted to say hello. She immediately rolled over with her legs in the air and just lay there. Frozen. We encouraged her to get out of that and run around with the other dogs, and she sort of did, but then, as soon as one of the male dogs lifted a paw she flipped over again. A lovely short-haired Collie paid a lot of attention to her but she found him a little overwhelming to the point where she actually snapped at him. There was also a tall, slim Saluki who really liked her, and I was not sure the flipping over was fear or ‘take me! – take me!’ from her side… she seemed to find him a bit of a stud. He was very gentle.
The introduction to the doggie park was pretty much our way of telling her that meeting other dogs is fine, not the end of the universe, and that she’s one of them. She lived to tell the tale. And was fine by the end of it. Not a single bite to be seen anywhere.
The less successful part of the story… we went to the Prater on Monday. Thinking that GREAT! there are lots of dogs she can socialise with and we can let her off the lead. Yeah. We’re really bright, we is. With a dog we hardly know.
This is the famous Prater ferris wheel that was nearly bought by Madame Tussaud's. I'm so glad it didn't happen!
We let her off the lead after she’d met a Whippet puppy she could deal with and play with, so we watched them have a bit of a mad run-around and then suddenly she took off, like a streak, straight ahead… and vanished out of sight. SPLASH! Effing great. She’d found the stalest pond in all of Prater where there were a load of ducks she could scare and boy! did she scare them. And us. With the biggest grin ever seen on the face of a Golden Retriever she plunged in and sent 6-7 ducks squawking in various directions as she submerged herself in the filthiest, most foul-smelling pond imaginable. Though it didn’t take us all that long to get her out it felt like an eternity. I put that down to the stench of sulphur that we were trying to get away from but which followed us from then on… Amy waddling around with a happy grin on her face, us skulking back towards the U-bahn hoping desperately to find a hose of some kind to get the worst of the mud off her before entering an enclosed public space. Oohh, the humiliating guffaws of laughter from by-passers…
This is post hose-down under a pump. Imagine what she looked like before that.
This is the second time we’ve had to lever a large dog into the bath tub to avoid having to send Moby Dick to sofa eternity. The good thing about Amy was that once she was in, she stayed there and put up with the 3 + shampoos we subjected her to (my Ned! that stuff was hard to get out of her fur!), and she didn’t barge around the living room once she was let out the way Mischa did. And most dogs we’ve met in the past. Perhaps she sensed our dismay. But she managed to go from smelling of Dog to smelling of Sulphur to smelling of Mango in 2 short hours. Good dog. I could have killed her.
Post 3 x shampoo. She was amazingly patient throughout, more so than Mischa after his muddy forest walk. But, oh, I could have killed her...
But she’s gone now. And the flat is quiet and dog-free. No noises of Amy chewing the plastic wrapper from a pair of insoles. No Amy nudging Kevin to play with the duster (glad to say she only demolished one). No Amy to plonk a pair of my dirty socks on Kevin’s face first thing in the morning.
Our saving grace is Tom. We’ll be looking after his hamsters this weekend.
