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Sport 38: Winter 2010

Black Dog Book

page 3

Black Dog Book

A black dog runs down the hallway. At first glance it's not much of a dog. It's a reel of cotton with googly eyes. Closer up, it might fit inside a gerbil's exercise wheel. It has stalks for legs, a black bean for a body. My brother and I thump our hands on the carpet and chant: 'Big black dog, big black dog!' The dog gallops up and down the hallway between us, gleaming and grinning. This black dog is different from the one I picture when I hear the words black dog. The other dog is a bristle-backed animal with big wet teeth, and because it's a black dog, it's always after someone—it lunges over a fence to pursue a terrified postie, or it waits at the bottom of a tree, pawing the ground while some kid peers out of the branches. The dog has a thick ruff prickling up at its neck, like a stegosaur.

There are many dogs in the neighbourhood. One set of neighbours has a little black-and-white one tied to a chair on the lawn. When I call through the fence, the dog wags its whole bottom, its tail petrified between its legs. Another dog, a dirty brown thing, lies on a patch of concrete nearby, eyebrows twitching. The house is peeling paint with white curtains closed, no one home but dogs. I extend my hand through a gap in the fence, beckoning, but the dogs don't come. They look at me blankly, as if they've been told to stay forever.

The neighbours adjacent to our house own a Rottweiler, a dark ripple through a gap in the corrugated iron. Not far from its kennel is a cockatoo that shrieks or whistles throughout the day. It says 'Hello!' or 'Gidday!' and these sounds enrage the Rottweiler. It roars and leaps around, bashing its chain against the iron. I can hear the shape of that dog's teeth—they're pointy and twisted, like a mouthful of barbed wire.

Over the back fence lives Joe, a custard-yellow collie. The Joyces own him. He is forever chained to his kennel. When the five o'clock siren sounds, Joe howls—a long ascension like a trombone—and one page 4 of the Joyces yells, 'Shut up, Joe.' I fantasise about rescuing Joe from the Joyces. I unclip the chain and carry him in a wriggly bundle over the fence. I unbuckle his scungy leather collar. I fill a bucket with warm soapy water and give him a bath and dry him vigorously with a towel. I give him some leftover chicken from the fridge and make a sheepskin bed for him in the garage. 'Poor Joe,' I say. 'Not everyone's like them.'

The hallway dog is my only real reference point when it comes to dogs, and my friends say she isn't really a dog. She's too small. Her teeth are just droplets in her mouth. But I know that a nip can draw blood. Her head may be as delicate as an overturned teacup, but my ten-year-old hand fits perfectly. My father's hand covers her face. Her eyes, glancing side to side, peer out between his hairy fingers. My brother shows how you can push back the skin on her forehead to make her look like Cleopatra. As we laugh at her, the dog lifts her chin high and regards us with cool slanted eyes, shaming us all.

To the dog, all men are electric. My mother holds a staff party at our house, and men like Mr McVinnie and Mr Tutty arrive, tall, laughing teachers who conduct orchestras. When the dog sees them she begins to tremble. She slides onto her belly. Then she wriggles across the floor towards the man's shoes, pumping her neck like a swan, eyes shining.

If my father pays her attention, it's no different. From her belly position, she looks up at him—his huge leather shoes, his knees, his eyes—and her head quivers as if a current runs through her.

'Woof,' my father says suddenly, 'woof.' Then, straight-faced, he bobs up and down at the knees.

At this the dog goes limp, flops to her side, and exposes her pink stomach. Always my father ignores this cue and instead of stroking her he bends down and spins the dog around on her back on the linoleum, like a dial on a spinboard.

'Poor thing! The wee lady. The wee bird.' And my mother scoops the dog into her arms.

A miniature dachshund is very scoopable—it curls into your arms and becomes the shape of a croissant. And so my dog is always being picked up and put down and picked up again, and each time she gazes page 5 up meekly as she is moulded to somebody else's arms. There is a photo of me holding her as a puppy, a black armful, she's nibbling at my chin; I instantly remember her warmth, her soft wriggliness, and that I knew this was the dog for me.

The dog has lived with us for only a week or two when I get out of bed and creep into the wash house to settle her. My book on dachshunds didn't talk about the night whimpering. How can such a small dog, still only the size of a ball of wool, know so much about misery? When I open the door she immediately stops crying, flops out of her basket, and springs up on her hind legs. She doesn't know what night time is for yet. I take her paws and suddenly I start to cry.

How have I ended up with this dog, if it is a dog? I'd wanted her at the breeder's house in Huntly, when she was a tiny black seed firing around the backyard with five other tiny black seeds. And now I've got her and we're awake in the wash house, where it is always freezing.

The wash house is inside but it feels as though it is outside, like a pine needle house. The window over the sink doesn't close. At the other end of the room there's a deep hollow in the wall, a kind of tub, stacked up with damp logs and sprigs of kindling, which give the room a dark, cobwebby smell. The dog's bed, a cane basket and old sheepskin, looks like the fallen nest of a strange bird.

I begin to come into the wash house every night to settle the dog and cry. I start to look forward to it. In the wash house I gather as much as I can into my sadness; my sadness is a magnet in my chest pulling everything into it, my sadness is a giant dog with loose folds of skin, I hug it to me. Then I let my own dog lick the salt off my face. Her paws scratch me as she leaps up and grins, black eyes, white teeth.

Later one night, back in bed after my visit, I hear whispers. 'Out you go. Hurry up.' Click-click-click as the dog trots out to pee on the lawn. Then the soft scuffing of her paws as she pads up the hallway behind my mother to bed.

The dog may defer to my father, but she doesn't love him in the way she loves my mother. It's Mum who feeds her crusts in the mornings and tells her what's for dinner that night, how Japanese class has gone that day, whether my father is in trouble, what kind of wine she page 6 is opening. Before bed, Mum cradles her. Her black tail curls like a monkey's down Mum's nightie. To Mum, the dog is 'old goose', 'wee bird', or 'dogget'. She lets the dog lick her chin or put a wet nose into her eye. 'Gross! Mum! Don't let her do that!' Mum buries her face in the dog's neck. 'Oh, she's all right. Isn't she? Yes, yes. You've got a lovely biscuity smell today.'

I'm getting to know all of the dog's smells. At the breeder's in Huntly she smelt brand new, of puppies and cut grass. Now she is toxic after a dousing with flea powder and soapy after a bath. She is smoky when we collect her from the Otorohanga kennels where she stays with Mrs Dower, a parched-looking woman with the wattled neck of a hen. Mostly the dog really does smell biscuity—malt biscuits, the soft bits at the bottom. She smells of the kitchen, too: hairy sponges and tea towels.

At night now, the dog sleeps between my parents. I know this isn't right. My book has told me to have a hard heart. Before bed you should lock the pup in her designated night place—the wash house— with only her water bowl and basket. Put her in her bed, look into her eyes, and tell her, 'Stay.' If you leave her for alone for long enough, she'll realise that you are not going to save her. She'll become less frightened of being on her own. In the morning she'll respect you for your resilience and herself for her bravery. Of course I have failed these first tests; I've come to comfort her time and again. But never, never would I go as far as to let her sleep in my bed. Now there is no hope of redemption.

'Say goodnight to the wee lady,' my mother tells me as she stands in my doorway with the dog hugged to her chest. 'Goodnight! Goodnight!'

I sometimes think that the dog looks as if she is a part of my mother, another head on her shoulders or maybe an extra limb, a dog-shaped limb. 'Goodnight.'

Long before I have a dog of my own, I like to read books about dogs, especially Black Dog by Pamela Allen. Black Dog is Christina's pet. Christina is a kind-looking girl with brown hair. She loves Black Dog and Black Dog loves her. But one cold day Christina glimpses a blue bird in the forest. She is entranced. She would do anything to see it page 7 again. Black Dog curls up by himself, showing the whites of his eyes, waiting for Christina to remember him. But she presses her face to the window, looking for the bluebird. The seasons change. Black Dog has bones showing through his coat. Days pass but Christina doesn't even glance at him. One day she thinks she sees the blue bird high in the sky—she rushes outside!—but it's not a bird at all, it's Black Dog! Tangled up in the trees, then falling out of the sky. He lands in a crumpled heap at her feet. Christina hurries him inside, cuddling him, but it's too late. That's the end of the story.

The other dogs I know from books are heroic ones. They blur together, a fast-moving pack, a cloud of dogs. A Saint Bernard keeps an Inuit girl warm when a snowstorm buries her. A Bull Terrier and a Labrador walk thousands of miles through the wilderness, eating frogs and fighting wildcats. An old black mongrel and a Foxy wearing a funny hat escape from a laboratory and are hunted through the countryside. A German Shepherd is abandoned on a beach and rescued by a young boy—they run everywhere together, and the boy teaches the dog to read. A genetically engineered Golden Retriever not only learns to read, he learns to write. Dogs! I want them all. I want to feed the tiger—which seems more dog than cat—that comes to tea. I want to ride the lion in the meadow. I want to rescue Laika, the dog who was chosen to fly into space. At school my teacher says Laika enjoyed orbiting Earth but I can't believe it. And somewhere I see a painting of a woman with full frilly skirts, sitting on a chair in the European style, hands crossed, with a tiny black dog at her feet.

'Girl! Girl! Is that a sausage dog?'

I keep walking, quickly quickly, awkwardly, along the riverbank. My slouch socks feel huge around my ankles. My bike shorts are too tight. I can't bear to be looked at. I can't bear for my dog to be looked at. Just ignore them is the advice my mother has given me, but somehow, with certain people, it makes things worse; your silence becomes a blank page on which they are free to write whatever they like. They're just animals, my mother says.

That's not nice to animals, I say. Recently I have become a vegetarian. I am always ready to express outrage at anyone acting particularly carnivorous or speciesist—my new favourite word, which page 8 I have read in the book Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, who is pictured on the cover standing in a field in the dark, looking worried. I notice that speciesist is a word that makes my mother look worried, too, and weary.

The dog skitters on her lead. She hurries ahead, tail suctioned between her legs. 'It's all right,' I mutter. She stop, looks back at our accosters, and tries a few high-pitched barks, like a seal. I tug on the lead. A dog on a lead is meant to give your walking a purpose. But there is never any purpose to our walking other than to turn around and go back home—she wants to go backwards always, back home. My next dog will not want to go home. It will always run ahead of me, stopping to look back every so often, just to check that I'm there, then it will run on.

'What a snob. Snob with a sausage dog!' More laughing.

Just ignore them, quickly quickly along the riverbank.

They're running out of patience. 'That's not even a dog. It's a rat! Kill it!'

Something bubbles up in me. 'Get fucked,' I cry. I've never learnt how to swear properly and they can tell—they explode into laughter. The dog lets out a round of embarrassing barks. 'Shut up, you,' I say, and she does. 'This is all your fault,' I say. We squelch along the riverbank away from the laughing and towards the bridge. It's autumn; brown and yellow leaves paste the grass.

When we get to the hill the dog looks up at me forlornly. I sigh and as always I give in, pick her up, and carry her all the way up Mangarino Road, her wet feet in my hands, both of us too small.

Whenever we go out together, we end up making a scene. The hecklers find her incredible. A dog shaped like a sausage! What's the point of an animal like that? Don't you want a dog shaped like a dog? And I can't remember why, at the beginning, I insisted to my parents that this was the dog for me.

There's a story I read somewhere about a man named Johnnie Greenwood. Alone at night but for his horse, Johnnie had to ride through a wood. As he entered the wood, a big black dog appeared. It scampered beside him as he rode. When Johnnie emerged from the wood, the dog suddenly vanished. On Johnnie's way home, the dog page 9 joined him again, and once clear of the woods, disappeared again. Years later, two men confessed that they had planned to murder Johnnie that night. But the apparition of the black dog frightened them away.

Now there was a dog that commanded respect! It's an unusual story, because in other stories phantom black dogs are almost always harbingers of death, sorrow, and disease. They have names like Black Shuck, Wild Hunt, and Hellhound. Their eyes glow red or yellow. 'He saw the dark,' writes James Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 'Was it true about the black dog that walked there at night with eyes as big as carriage lamps? They said it was the ghost of a murderer. A long shiver of fear flowed over his body.'

In stories, anyone who sees a phantom black dog will probably die. One story tells how, in the 1970s, some children were bicycling to Hadleigh Castle in Essex when a snarling black dog appeared on their path. Its eyes glowed at them as it bared its teeth. Wailing, the children cycled back home as fast as they could. One by one over the years, they became sick and began to die.

It makes me imagine poor Black Dog waiting for Christina, sad and sinking, then finally turning mean, baring his white teeth, black eyes reddening.

We gang up on my mother and the dog. 'Why do you let her sleep in the bed? Disgusting.'

'It's not disgusting. She's lovely and warm,' says Mum. She has read somewhere that a little dog is useful as a warm compress for relieving indigestion.

Neil gives a laugh of outrage. 'You might as well use a bag of warm mince.'

'Or a hottie,' I suggest.

If my father is unhappy about the sleeping arrangements he keeps quiet. When the dog is in his way he simply scoops her up and dumps her on another part of the bed—she bounces and then picks herself up, looking up at him in surprise.

'Be careful,' exclaims my mother.

My father is not known for his kindness to animals. He doesn't understand them, what they're for. He once ran over a turkey and page 10 left it, tumbling, on the road behind us. 'It was it or us,' he said as I screamed. I do not forgive him for the turkey's death. Perhaps it is good that my mother is wholly on the dog's side; she can protect her, hold her out of his arm's reach.

In my memory the dog and my mother are serene together, as if sitting for a portrait, looking out at me. My mother is like a queen, her little lap dog peering out faithfully from under her arm.

One night when they come to say goodnight I start to cry. 'You care about the dog more than me,' I say. I've been holding onto this line for a long time, waiting for my moment. I have speeches in my head, whole epic dialogues between my parents and me. But now that I've said the first bit, my throat clamps up.

Mum protests, but she's laughing. 'Oh. Oh, well—that's not true.'

'Yes, it is. That's what it feels like.' I press against the window of my room. The town's lights stream.

Mum sighs. 'Stop this nonsense. You've got a whole new day tomorrow. Isn't that good? You don't have to do a thing and God will hand you a brand new day on a plate.'

Or am I putting words in her mouth? Often she talked about how lucky we all were to have hundreds of chances, one after the other, to be better—each chance a new life coming with the day. Push open the curtains and there it is in the clouds over Te Kuiti. But I don't know for sure if she reminded me of this when I accused her of caring more about the dog than me. I do remember that it was night time and that I hugged the dog and she licked my face—things seemed to be better when one of us was upset. For instance, when she got a bone stuck in her tooth and I wrestled it out of her mouth with pliers as she squirmed and grumbled, and afterwards we lay down together on the couch, exhausted, her head in my lap as I cried—I liked to think that she was grateful for a little while, that maybe she knew I had saved her life.

One year the dog gets a funny tremor in her neck. Her head arches to one side as if she's listening for something. Then the tremoring becomes more urgent, like her head is being pulled sideways. She gets a glazed look in her eye. Mum is irritated at first. 'Stop that,' she says. page 11 'Sit still, dogget.' But the dog keeps trembling. Even her eyes seem to tremble.

Then the dog begins waiting at the bottom of steps. She wants to be picked up. 'Lazy,' we say. But then we realise something is wrong. She is beginning to drag her back legs behind her. I can't take her for walks any more. It's less hassle just to carry her, and even then she squirms around, wanting down, her front feet kicking while her back legs dangle. At night Mum bundles her in a tartan rug and carries her out to the caravan, where they sit together on the sofa while Mum studies Japanese. The dog can no longer hop up and down into bed. Mum is always there, lifting her up and down, the dog's personal chair lift. 'She shouldn't be sleeping in the bed any more,' I say. 'What if it makes her worse?' 'She'll be all right.' Mum lifts the dog to her chest. 'Won't you, darling?' The dog's head quivers. She is like an old woman with Parkinson's, like my father's sister with the scary tremor, a woman who lives in a huge lonely house in Melbourne. The vet tells us that the dog has paralysis in her back caused by a herniated disc. She will need to have an operation. Back problems are common in dachshunds. Running up and down steps, leaping up and down from laps and beds—we shouldn't be surprised. The operation will cost thousands of dollars, but it might get her back on her feet.

The vet is a cheerful man who is always telling a joke and letting out loud guffaws. He is as tall as it is possible to be. His brown shoes are the size of small dogs. But now his eyes are kind; he's good at this. As he and my mother and I stand around the examination table he strokes the dog, pushing her down with his strong brown hands as if trying to stroke the fear out of her. For a moment she stops trembling and looks up at us and moves her tail. 'A good sign,' says the vet.

He gives us a cage for her, which he calls a crate. The crate is tall and roomy, more like an aviary for birds. 'Keep her in there while you think about it,' the vet says. 'She shouldn't be moving around.'

The crate goes in the kitchen. I put some cushions and the tartan rug inside, then put the dog on top. She flops to one side. I can't bring myself to shut the door of the crate. Why haven't I been nicer to her, why did I stop wanting her?

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'Black dog,' I whisper, 'you'll be all right.' I shut the door. Every day I shut the door.

Maybe I have grown bored with her, the way she never comes when you called her, the fleas on her belly, the way she gets under the house and barks at hedgehogs, the bones of dead animals she drags into the hallway. Early in the morning I'd hear the snuffling sounds and when I opened the door her shiny eyes glance up out of the dark; she's hunkered over something bloody and dirty. The growls that came out of her when I tried to take it off her are the growls of a big black dog. She has never bitten me—at least, not with intent—but at those moments I know she could. In her tiny black body, so low to the ground, there is a real dog.

I know that when she is well she can take care of herself, and this is why, whenever she and the cat get into a fight, my brothers and I clap our hands and egg them on.

'Skk-skk-skk!'

'Get in behind!'

Even fully grown, the dog is much smaller than the cat. The cat is an elderly black-and-white stalker who likes her food and keeps to herself. She has a round swinging belly but her paws are quick and she is more agile than the dog. The fights are explosive. The cat scratches her nose once or twice; she screams, and then, muttering, she turns around and backs the cat into a corner with her rear end. She waggles her bottom and looks over her shoulder, grinning, until the cat slips past like an eel, disgusted. She stalks into a corner and begins cleaning herself furiously. The fights never progress much past this. Neither does their relationship. The cat barely tolerates the dog and the dog delights in putting the cat in undignified situations after which she must clean herself.

From time to time I think that the cat is more mine than the dog. We grew up together, the cat and I, she coming home in a cage just a few days after me. She is at home on my knees or prowling along the windowsills of my room. On the other hand, the dog and I have become a chore to each other—the walks, the baths, the fleas, the bones; and now, the dog in the crate, to be worried over.

*

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In the crate she wheezes silently with her mouth wide open and her head arched to one side. Other times she wriggles around on the floor, in circles, and at horrible moments it looks as though she's dancing. I crouch behind the cage to make the soothing, kissing noises we all make, but she doesn't seem to hear. Her eyes are moist as she stares at me: I wonder what she sees, if it's still me. In the evenings, we take her out of the cage and lie her on the couch while my parents watch Coronation Street, and the whole time she keeps up her whimpering and muttering, a weird kind of scat song.

After school I ask my mother, 'What are we going to do?' My mother's face creases; she stands in the kitchen with one hand on her hip and the other over her mouth.

But I don't know if this is a true memory because I don't remember what she says, only that another afternoon she comes home carrying the old cane basket.

There are many dogs in the city where I now live. Today, for instance: a black dog skittering down Vivian Street without a lead; three dogs (one big, one middle-sized, one up to my ankle) running with their owner around Island Bay; and a fat black Labrador woggling along behind its owner in Newtown. I frequently see a man in a bowler hat down town, walking two black-and-tan dachshunds: stately, well-behaved dogs on long leads, trotting competently beside him. I also have a job walking a wealthy man's German shephard around Oriental Bay. I carry plastic bags to pick up its warm, soft poo. Once I find I have forgotten my bags, and an enraged man chases the two of us, shouting, 'Clean up after your dog.' Your dog. I go house sitting for a friend who owns two corgis. They are bright-eyed and forever hungry; they gobble their food ecstatically. Whenever I see a dog I want to kneel down and get its face between my hands and look into its eyes. When I do this, I see my dog's eyes, as if I've opened a book. In this book there is a picture of the dog inside her cane basket. She is wrapped in her tartan blanket, her head tucked under like a swan's. She's curled up, perfectly asleep. I touch her, but she's cold and hard, as if she has set. Had my mother made the decision alone or did we talk about it? But this is not important in the book; my mother isn't in the book. I sit on the porch beside the dog wrapped up neatly in page 14 her blanket, like a gift, her black coat smooth. In death she belongs to me.

In the book my brother and I crouch in the hallway and roll a tennis ball between us. 'Big black dog, big black dog!' She gallops up and down, ears flying, and is a pup again.

In my memory the hallway is always dark, like a wood, and sometimes we run through it together. She protects me.