The story of Dog Lately

Dear Dorit V.C.

Thank you for your letter and photo. Is your lovely little dog Bandit a Tibetan terrier? I had one just like it but sadly he died at the remarkable old age of eighteen years four years ago, his name was Dog Lately. Like have you seen the dog lately? He was a wild dog in many ways and somewhat savage towards other dogs. He never discriminated size-wise. Any dog would do. With half a chance he’d just tear into them, be they Alsatians or Pomeranians. More than once we had to take him to the vet and get him stitched up.           

His original owner was a local millionaire of some note in the white goods business. He bought the dog as a pup from a dog breeder in Melbourne for a very high price. The pup was a Tibetan Terrier, the breed that in ancient times were used to guard the temples. That little pup more pedigree than the Queen and I suspect that Mrs Millionaire wanted to show him at the Hobart and Launceston Shows and lift her profile in the doggy world.            

Unfortunately his original owner wasn’t observant enough to note that dear little Dog Lately only had one testicle and a slightly overshot jaw. He was definitely not a show prospect. The millionaire who bought him, it seems, had been gazumped by a canine breeder and it was suggested through the local gossip that he was somewhat pissed off with the deal and took out his spite on the growing pup by not giving him a lot of love and affection. And Dog Lately who, like most dogs, had an insatiable desire for the same ran away from his new home and spent the next eighteen months living off the land. He became expert at hunting down and catching the local and plentiful Tasmanian native hens.

He also learnt the art of grafting in between times. He turned up in the yard of a friend of mine one rainy winter’s morning and sat beneath a camellia bush looking somewhat wet and miserable and fixed his doggy eyes on my friend the moment he stepped out his door. Well, you know what doggy eyes can do in the pleading game? Within the hour the dog through the largesse of my friend’s wife had a quantity of breakfast left overs, including some first class home-cured bacon rinds and crusty bread to fatten him up. Naturally enough, being a dog of some wisdom, he found that grafting was a good deal less strenuous than chasing wild birds so he turned up the following morning and got more of the same.

And so it went on for several weeks and Dog Lately was putting on weight. He looked like he was settling in. He began to stay around longer and longer. Sometimes, right through until almost dark, when he would mysteriously disappear. By that time my friends had found out the hard cold facts about Dog Lately’s recent  history. They reasonable assumed that having satisfied his doggy needs for the day he had either returned to his original owners or to some secret doggy den somewhere.

Both assumptions that were proved wrong when my friend met one of his neighbours some time later and the neighbour told him how this stray muddy dog turned up on his doorstep just before dark each night and cadged the family’s evening meal leftovers. He told how the dog would gulp down his meal, slurp up some water and collapse on to their verandah to sleep. In the morning there was no sign of him.            When I finally met the wayward dog I was also smitten by those eyes of his. I offered to take him home with me and make such a fuss of him that he would never stray again. Everybody agreed that it was a great idea, including, it seemed the dog who had already decided the carpet in the back of my Kombi was a good place to snatch a bit of shut-eye after a hard day’s grafting.

So off I went with him in the back of my van - an excitement for both of us. Me, with plans of walking the dog on the beach, playing ball with him in the parks and having high expectations of having a  dog to guard our temple when we were away. The dog’s excitement was more direct. The moment I started the van he suddenly changed from a happy soft-eyed, tail-wagging doggy into a monster. Every car we passed got his message with his snarling and barking that he wasn’t a dog to be fooled with. And I’ll swear to this day, that when we so coincidently passed a carry van with the name of his late master emblazoned on its side, the dog’s barking rose to a crescendo that would have put the hounds of Baskerville to shame. He literally hurled himself at the windows of my van. Leaving, I might add, smears and scratches that I could never quite rub off.

Unfortunately, my envisaged doggy games with him never eventuated. Dog Lately never brought back a ball I threw. He preferred rather to eat them. Neither did he ever stay home and house watch. He insisted on going everywhere we went, whether it was to a party, a funeral or a wedding. He sat in the driver’s seat with eyes half closed looking like a bored taxi driver waiting for us to return. That Kombi belonged to him and woe to any stranger trying to touch it. Our warm house was of very little interest him. He preferred to sleep outside in his kennel or in the Kombi. He was an outside dog. Indoors was alien to him.

That showed on the first night I brought him home. I had to pick him up and carry his struggling body inside where hopefully he would get to know his new home. He spent most of that night trying to eat his way through the back door. Too scared to let him out we fed him up in the closed porch until he was busting and only let him out on a lead to recycle his meaty-bites in the garden. I had to practically drag him back into the porch when he was finished where he howled and yapped half the night and spent the other half working on the door.           

Two days later when he’d quietened down somewhat we decided give him a run. We walked him up the road towards the farmlands and that was when he showed us some of his acquired show-dog characteristics, he was out in front, pulling at his lead like a sled dog, his plumed tail up and wagging, fit for any show. When we were in the open paddocks we let him off his lead and held our breaths. He was Ok for two minutes sniffing around, but then when he hit the trail of native hen he was off with a speed that would have shamed a racing greyhound.

For hours we trekked around the paddocks and the nearby dams, calling and whistling, but there was neither sight nor sound of Dog Lately. We imagined him racing the forty kilometres back to our friend’s place on the outskirts of the city to get his leftovers. Or worse, getting himself squashed on the roads in the attempt.

We decided we’d better go home and ring around. But that dog continued to surprise. When he got back home in the early afternoon there he was sitting up expectantly on our doorstep, with the kind of eloquent, tongue-hanging expression that seemed to enquire where had we been all day. We were further surprised to see that lying between his paws was a somewhat mangled and very dead, native hen.  We presumed the bird he was offering was not so much of a gift as it was his token of his acceptance of us as his new slaves…