BULLY TART ANYONE?
By Terry Doe
You know how all Bull Terriers are all ruff-tuff, roister-doister, macho types that laugh in the face of pain and cock their mighty legs against all degrees of agony? No? Mine neither. What’s going on there, then?
Morris, in common with his breed, is indeed 90% tank. The problem is, he’s also 10% tart. The former allows him to crash through previously solid objects, fall off high things, head-butt walls, trees and assorted immovables and generally blunder through life inside his natural flak jacket without so much as a squeak. The latter 10% however, compels him to shriek like a scalded queen if you tweak his toenails, or, heaven forbid, he gets a thorn in his tootsie. I say again – what’s all that about?
Example. Morris recently ran full-speed down the bank of a reservoir and discovered that the laws of momentum also applied to him. His legs couldn’t keep pace with basic physics, thus he became a hairy snowball, which immediately evolved into a one-dog avalanche which hit a small but unreasonable tree. The impact could be heard throughout most of Berkshire and even those with houses beneath the Heathrow flightpath poked heads out of windows and exclaimed “Blimey – that was a loud one!”
I was convinced that Morris was at least dead, and I would have to bear home his broken body a-weeping and a-wailing with traditional grief. In fact, it was the tree that required a bit of resuscitation, and despite my best efforts, its anti-sheep, mesh protector tube-jobby just couldn’t be saved. Whilst I hurriedly re-vertical’d the tree and vainly tried to unbend the mesh, Morris took his unscathed self off to snaffle a gobful of sheep poo. A detailed physical examination of my dog revealed neither scratch nor scrape, and it wasn’t until my hand brushed lightly against his toenail that he whimpered with the pain of it all.
Now, contrast that, with this. Last week, Morris stuck his stupid face into an ants’ nest. I’m a bit of a whiz on what goes on in the natural world and I can spot the homes of ants, bees, wasps and most rightful occupants long before Morris ever gets a chance to evict any and get himself stung in the process. Alert as ever, I moved Morris away from the impressive, hi-rise ant heap – complete with hanging gardens of grass and a ragwort feature – before he was swarmed-at. One particularly valiant ant managed to unload its bum-bay of formic acid onto Morris’s lip, but I considered my dog to have escaped lightly given that the heap contained millions of ants and therefore at least a pint of bottom-acid.
Well, you’d have thought that Morris had been harpooned. Per-lease! There was pawing-at-the-face going on all over the place, interspersed with rubbing-of-the-head-along-the-ground and even a bit of thrash-wiggling on the back with legs in the air. This was set to a soundtrack of bleats and yowls to which only those undergoing non-anaesthetized dental work are entitled.
“Get up you bloody poof!” I muttered, as Morris once more thrashed the thrash of the pantomime dying swan, amid snorts of imaginary pain and yet more pawing and ground rubbing. And please don’t think me unsympathetic, here. I know my dog and his foibles only too well, and I also knew exactly how this melodrama would end. Sure enough, as soon as Morris spotted something worthy of his attention, in this case nothing more than a well-widdled-on litter bin, he forgot his immense trauma and went for a sniff. What a total tart he is.
He even tried to milk the ant incident when we reached home, doing his floppy-eared poorly doggy act to anyone mug enough to fall for it. Strangely, only extended scratching, petting and general fussing seemed to release Morris from his acid-bath hell, although the constant, propeller-like wagging of his tail gave the game away somewhat. Obviously, I was having none of it and told the mugs that they were only reinforcing Morris’s tart-like tendencies. Just as obviously, I was completely ignored as, one after the other my lot indulged the hairy fool with all sorts of rewards.
The question remains; why do these dogs brush off real pain so lightly, yet go into girly mode with the minor stuff? Has it something to do with their original makeup and the hideous ‘sport’ for which they were invented? If that were so, though, how do we explain the tarty bit? I wonder if it’s possible that these dogs have a sort of cut-off switch that’s activated by pain. Perhaps only trivial traumas fail to trip the switch, leaving our dogs to enjoy playing the drama-queen in full non-discomfort.
Could be, you know. In fact, if that cut-off mechanism went a bit technical it could also exclude other impulses such as learning, logic and acquired intelligence, couldn’t it? It could you know. Ladies and gentlemen – I do believe the mists surrounding Morris are finally clearing. . .
