Strange Love

(Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the dog)

26th September 2020

This is the story of one man and his dog. It’s not a story that I ever expected to tell, because I’ve never been a doggy kind of guy. Far from it, I come from a long line of dog haters and from an early age my parents instilled in me a strong suspicion of dogs, and their owners. Perhaps I would have overcome this canine contempt in time, but a couple of incidents when I was younger cemented my deep distrust of dogs.

When I was 17 I spent a year in Israel, and stayed for a month on a moshav, an agricultural village in the north of the country. I lived with a family at one end of the moshav, and a friend stayed at the other end. And between me and him, along the dirt track which stretched through the village, a pack of local dogs lurked with menace. I’ve no idea if they belonged to anyone, or if they were unloved strays, but every time I walked to see my pal, the dogs followed me. One or two at first, just behind me, growling enough to frighten me into picking up my pace. Others in their mangy little gang would spot me and join in the pursuit. The pace would quicken, the barking volume would increase, more and more dogs in on the fun. And so, every day I would end up running away from a pack of barking mutts that literally hounded me through the moshav while the locals laughed at the scared Scottish boy.

And then there was the staffy incident. This was many years later — a good friend of Lois generously gave us the use of her home in Johannesburg for a few days. Just Lois and me, a beautiful house, and their large Staffordshire bull terrier. 30 kilos of growling, drooling, evil dog meat. The dog spent the weekend intimidating me by jumping at me and aggressively barking. “He’s just trying to be friendly”, explained Lois nonchalantly, as I tried my best not to cry. The low point occurred on the morning I used the swimming pool. Each time I tried to get out, the devil-dog ran at me, snarling its intention to maul me to death. I screamed for Lois to come help (now a regular theme in my stories) but she was showering and drying her hair and did not hear me. So she says. I remained scared and trapped in that pool for an hour, taken prisoner by a hound. When Lois eventually came to rescue me, she patted the dog and he walked meekly away. I explained what had happened. Lois laughed at me for a bit, then started with, “he’s just trying to…”

“Don’t even fucking say it,” I replied.

These incidents, and many others, reinforced the absolute truth of my simple maxim — dogs are shit. And I would gladly have maintained a simple dog-free existence forever, but Lois had to ruin everything.

Lois is a doggy kind of girl — from early in our relationship she regaled tales of childhood dogs and dreams of future ones. I liked her a lot, but this was a big black mark against her. I made my position very clear, and she pretended to accept it, but Lois was playing a long game. We got married, had kids, and she used all her powers of manipulation to recruit our children into her insidious campaign to persuade me that getting a dog would be “a good thing.” But I was resolute. No dogs for us.

I’m confident I would have held out forever, had my sister Olga not broken the Allon family circle of trust. In an act of sibling treachery up there with the Miliband fratricide, she agreed to get a family dog. And with the self-righteousness of the newly converted, she started telling Lois how wonderful their dog Zabba was, and that Zabba’s parents were having another litter, and that we could have Zabba’s brother. The rest of my family conspired, the pressure became unbearable, and I was weak. I caved.

I established some clear conditions. I would have nothing to do with the dog. The children would take him for a walk every day. He would not be allowed upstairs. Under no circumstances would I be expected to clean up his shit. They solemnly committed to my very reasonable terms, and so, in October 2016, Ziggy arrived in our home.

This is not a love at first sight romantic tale. Our new dog was an ugly little runt that just yapped and crapped. I could not see the point. We’d finally got through the hard years of babies and toddlers, and suddenly we were back enduring howling in the middle of the night. But this time, not for a little human that, with a fair wind, might just evolve into something that could look after us in our years of infirmity. No, this was entirely self-inflicted pain for the benefit of a hound. Why would we do that to ourselves?

The dog was friendly, I’ll give him that. Too friendly. He wouldn’t leave me alone with his licking and clawing, and his stupid yappy grin. I tried to establish boundaries, but he was having none of that. Resistance became completely futile when I left my full-time job and started working from home. It made sense in every respect except one. In another example of life laughing in my face, I was suddenly Ziggy’s primary carer.

And I guess that’s where my relationship with our dog started to change a little. For the first time in my life I was on my own all day with nobody to talk to. So I started talking to the dog. Of course I did. Like the Tom Hanks character in Castaway who had Wilson the volleyball, I chatted with Ziggy just to get me through the day. I could still never admit to any affection towards our dog, but the cunning little blighter was worming his way into my psyche.

I set more red lines than Theresa May, and Ziggy gleefully trotted over every one of them. He was to sleep downstairs, and was not allowed upstairs in any circumstances. Yet one evening his bed suddenly appeared on our upstairs landing. “He’s lonely down there,” explained Lois, “we have to consider his mental health.”

Soon enough, the dog bed had moved again, now placed inside our bedroom, beside our bed. “He’s only going to scratch on the door until he gets in,” said Lois by way of further explanation, “better to save ourselves the bother of getting up.” Now, when I get up early in the morning, Ziggy gets up with me and follows me downstairs. And at the weekend, when I try to sleep later, he comes round and licks my elbow until I get up. Yes, that’s correct. Every weekend morning I am woken at 7am on the dot by a dog licking my elbow. Clearly nobody is considering my mental health.

Ziggy has continued to aggravate throughout his time in our home. He still goes nuts every time the doorbell rings, famously getting the Royal Mail to ban us after their postman was “attacked by a vicious animal”. He’s notorious in our neighbourhood for running around our back garden in the dark, howling at the moon like a proper mad dog for hours on end.

And yet. And yet…

This is a story in three acts. In act one, I really was not keen on Ziggy. That was the logical phase. In act two, I was dismayed to discover that I had started to care about our faithful little hound. This unwanted affection clashed with everything I understood about my identity as a curmudgeonely dog-hater, so I refused to admit that I was fond of Ziggy, despite all the evidence. Dognitive dissonance, if you like. And the final act? Well this is it, my coming out story.

Because it turns out that people can change. With every boundlessly excited greeting when I get home. With every expression of delight as I brandish what is apparently the greatest stick ever found on the planet. And I’ll admit it, even the 7am licks on the elbows sometimes make me smile. He’s filled our home with joy, and I’d need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by that.

Ziggy won me over. I love my dog.