We’ve decided to give the dog away. Or I have decided, since it has been me who has spent thirteen years now with him by my side. But D agrees, since now he too loves and takes care of the dog.
The dog is going on a trial basis to North Wales where my mum, who loves him almost as much as I do, will look after him. Where hopefully he will be happier. Hopefully he will spend less time shaking with his tail between his legs, refusing to go to the toilet in the garden and instead using the five - FIVE - minutes I spend putting the baby to bed to piss on the dining room floor, meaning that when I come in and find that he has done this I find myself saying “BAD DOG” in a voice that I would prefer to use less of, and the dog shakes and puts his tail between his legs again.
Ren is not a bad dog, but he is scared of the baby, who throws things and bangs things and approaches the dog with his fat, tiny hands outstretched and a huge grin on his face, hoping to yank his ears and smack him around the face with a wooden strawberry. It is okay that he is scared of the baby. It is okay that he misses the years where he had me to himself, where we would walk and walk and walk and he would lie on me and I would search the fur of his belly for fleas in the way that I know he likes, submissive and sleepy, little Renardeau, fox cub, baby boy.
I will miss him so much. How long until I change my mind? I have taken care of him in circumstances much less than ideal. I have kept him secret from many landlords. I have taken him to the restaurant because he had separation anxiety and so he became the restaurant dog, too, there late into the night, curled up on the floor, waiting. He has taken himself to bed when I would not go to bed myself. He has been under the covers in very cold winters, in times of great distress or apathy.
There was only one ex-boyfriend who wouldn’t have the dog on the bed, and so Ren put up with the sofa for a while, waited patiently for the relationship to end and for his rightful place on the bed to be restored. It never would have worked with that person. He was very jealous. He would turn around and walk away from me without warning in the street as a punishment. We liked to eat in a Taiwanese restaurant on Goldhawk Road. I was always checking his reaction to everything I did. “Sometimes I think you’re going to hurt me,” I said, “The way you look at me.” “I’m much more likely to hurt myself,” he replied, eating a radish cake, which was one of our favourite things to eat. He walked away from me in the rain that night, and again the following week in a very busy train station for some other misdemeanour. I do have a crippling fear of abandonment, but I think that this habit of leaving me would have been cruel even if I had a normal type personality.
When the baby is sick and I am rocking him and he won’t be put down and it is raining, I cannot walk the dog. A dog needs to be walked and loved and there is the special way to check the fur of his belly for fleas, of course. I’m writing these instructions down, because it is important: Here is the place on his ribs that you can scratch to make him kick his leg. And here you can gently squeeze him and he will moan quite loudly with pleasure like a set of broken bagpipes. His eyes are a little milky with cataracts but it doesn’t bother him. His nose is the perfect shape to fit right into the pot and get the last of the yoghurt. He hates the postman. He hates, hates, hates the postman. He would kill the postman if given half a chance.
He feels so light when I pick him up now. He is less than half the weight of my baby. He was so small when I got him that I carried him in a bag. He walked around the streets unleashed. He got lost so many times. And still, I didn’t put a lead on him. He always found his way back to me… do you remember when Ricky Gervais found him on the Heath and drove him back to me? My mum once said “That’s your claim to fame, isn’t it?” And I indignantly said “I hope not!”
Anyway…