It's a Dogs Life part 5

Jaquenetta German Shepherd Dogs

It's a Dogs Life !

Greetings to you all. I am having trouble getting near the word processor. Squawk is having her first book published and she has completely monopolized it for the past few weeks. Her work is fictitious nonsense for the general masses; mine is much more important, being for a specialized discerning part of the population with a German Shepherd in the household. I had a sneak preview, the book isn’t interesting, I’m not mentioned in it! My mother is though ( of course her name has been changed ), a few pages are allocated to the ordeal she went through when she had her first litter, and lost all ten puppies after a caesarean was performed too late. The vet told Squawk and Growler the bitch was too humanized, because she slept in the bedroom, and didn’t want to whelp. Utter twaddle as it turned out, my litter she whelped no problem. The humans were worried this week as, ten years later, history seemed to be repeating itself. The German import was long overdue her whelping date. As before because the bitch was in good condition, not overweight, and a puppy was felt moving inside her, the vet advised leaving her to have them naturally ( our vet seems to use caesarean as a last desperate measure, instead of an early option ). Eventually on her seventieth day the vet went in, after asking the humans if they were sure they had the dates right, ( as if a GSD breeder would not already have worked out when the puppies would be due on the day they took the bitch for mating ), finding one large puppy. He admitted she would not have whelped naturally, and that he had operated just in time as it had begun seeping. He had to give the puppy oxygen to keep it alive. ( Why is it ordinary folk have to pay for their mistakes, but professional people seem to get other people to pay for theirs ). I don’t see why the humans need to go half way across the country to use some foreign thing on our bitches, when I would have been on tap, so to speak, if they hadn’t tampered with my equipment. The class one bitch missed and the German import had one puppy. I bet they would have had ten each with me no problem. And if I had a sense of humour I would chuckle at the fact that the humans have paid out over nine hundred pounds, for what looks like to me a long-coated puppy!

It’s coming up to that time of year when our village is overrun with thousands of strange people congregating in fields near us, and making lots of noise. When the last festival was on, we were out in the garden and a chap called across asking to use the telephone. The humans agreed. He came in looking very nervous, his T-shirt was torn nearly off, and he kept glancing towards the roadway. I could sense fear about him, but it wasn’t us dogs barking that was frightening him. He said his sister in Scotland had a white German Shepherd and he liked the breed. So that endeared him to the humans straightaway. Apparently there was a gang at the festival after him, because he reported them to the Police for stealing from the tents. They chased him and he managed to escape and find a security guard. There was nothing he could do to help him but take him to the nearest exit, where he would have to find his own way out of the village. He was convinced he was still being followed and they were going to kill him. We were the first ones he asked who would let him use the telephone for a taxi to take him to a friend’s home. He was trembling all over. I went over to be made a fuss of, and as he stroked my head I could feel him calming down. Squawk told him, the dogs will let you know if there’s anyone approaching, besides the people from the festival aren’t allowed to attack villagers it’s bad publicity. I think we made him feel safer, but he wouldn’t go out into the garden again until it was dark. Squawk said she had never seen anyone that terrified. She gave him one of Growler’s old jumpers because he was shivering. The taxi finally arrived three hours after it was ordered, Growler saw him to the taxi which was parked in the roadway, and off he went. Afterwards the humans did wonder if his story was true or if this gang was after him for another reason.

The show bitch was full of herself when she returned from her tenth show. Her usual handler was not there, so the humans spent ages trying to find another handler for her; there being thirteen out of fourteen entries present in Special Yearling, they were in short supply. Although the humans go through the breed record supplement with a fine tooth-comb, read all the dog papers, yearbooks, and anything appertaining to GSD’s, so they know who’s who in German Shepherds; they don’t actually know many people personally on the show circuit. They have not been into showing long, their first show was with our young homebred bitch at the League Ch show last year, when she was ten months old. When the show bitch was due to enter the ring for her class the handler they had found backed out. With minutes to spare experienced handler Neil Dodds gallantly agreed to take her in ( he had intended leaving after the dog classes but was delayed ). She was called out nearer the front than the back of the line-up for the third consecutive show, and graded very good by the German judge. ( The judge happened to be the one who, several years previous, had agreed to sell a bitch to the humans, and then reneged on the deal. Growler would not let Squawk kick him on the shin and call him shyster ).

“See, even with a mega-handler you still didn’t win.” I mocked her.

“Well I was tired”, she snapped. “You woke us up in the night as usual to be let out to the toilet with your bladder problem.”

“Always an excuse,” I goaded. “Besides I haven’t got a bladder problem, I just get bored led up there by the side of the bed all night, and fancy a trip around the garden.”

“Then the humans got us up at five o’clock,” she whined. “I had to stay awake all the way there to keep an eye on the moving things on the roads, in case they attacked us. When we arrived at the venue the humans opened the back and side doors to keep us cool. There was so much to watch. I thought I saw you several times; that was frightening to be surrounded by so many hairy ones looking like you. They were entered in obedience, seems a lot of people actually prefer your sort!”

“You know yourself that when anyone stops to look over the garden fence at us, it’s always me they admire the most. And when people come for pet puppies they’re most disappointed to learn I’m not the father.”

“That’s because they don’t know any better,” she retorted scathingly and continued. “I didn’t go into the ring until three, and the sun was blazing down. The judge had us going round for ages. I slept all through the three and a half hour journey home. You get it easy staying home with mother all day.”

“Huh! No stamina you youngsters. I’ll race you round the garden ten times,” I challenged her.

Off we went, she started to catch up so I cut a corner. Unfortunately I skidded and ended up sat on a sage bush. The humans caught me and I was in trouble again. It’s a dogs life.

P.S. The shortest poem entitled Fleas.

Adam

Had’em.

Copyright J C Hiscox

Previously published in the GSD National Magazine Jun 1997

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