Читать книгу The Dog Listener: Learning the Language of your Best Friend - Monty Roberts, Jan Fennell - Страница 8

I am a great believer in learning from the mistakes we make in life. I should be, I have made more than enough of my own, in my relations with humans as well as dogs. Of all the lessons the latter have taught me, none was as painful as that I received in the winter of 1972. It seems to me fitting that I should begin with the tragedy of Purdey. For reasons that will soon become apparent, her story is inseparable from my own.

At the time I was married and was raising my two young children, my daughter, Ellie, born that February, and Tony, then two-and-a-half. We were living as a family in London but had just decided to move to the countryside, and a small village in Lincolnshire, in the heart of England. Like so many people drawn to the rural life, we were all looking forward to going on long country walks and decided we would like a canine companion to take with us. Rather than buying a new puppy, we thought we’d rescue a dog. We liked the idea of giving a home to an animal that had had a raw deal, so off we trundled to the RSPCA and saw this rather sweet, six-month-old, black and white, cross Border collie-whippet. We took her home, where we decided to call her Purdey.

She was not the first dog in my life. That had been Shane, a magnificent, tricoloured Border collie I had been given by my father when I was a 13-year-old girl growing up in Fulham, west London. I had always loved dogs and, as a little girl, had invented an imaginary one called Lady. I remember my grandmother indulging me by talking to my fictional friend with me. I think I saw dogs then, as I do now, as objects of unquestioning love, total loyalty, qualities that are hard to find in humans. Shane’s arrival in our family had only confirmed my feelings.

I trained Shane with my father, according to the technique Dad had used himself in raising his dogs as a young boy. Dad was a gentle man, but he was also determined the dog was going to do what we said. If Shane did something wrong he got a tap on the nose or a smack on his bottom. But I got a smack on the bottom too and I thought it was OK, particularly as Shane was an extremely smart creature and seemed to understand what we wanted. I can still remember the pride I used to feel at taking him on to Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common on the Number 74 bus. Shane would sit by my side without a lead, behaving impeccably all the time. He was a super dog.

If something works you go along with it, you don’t mend what isn’t broken, as they say. So when we got Purdey I decided to apply the same method as I had with Shane, teaching her the difference between right and wrong with a mixture of love, affection and, where necessary, force.

At first this method seemed to work for Purdey too. She behaved well and fitted easily into the family in London. The problems started when we eventually moved to Lincolnshire that September. Our new home could not have presented a greater contrast to noisy, over-populated London. We lived in a small, isolated village. There were no street lights, the buses ran only twice a week and it was a four-mile hike to the nearest shop. I remember when I was a toddler I had been taken to the seaside for the first time. I took one look at the sea and ran away back up the hill away from it. My expression as a three-year-old was ‘too big enough’ and, if she could have spoken, I’m sure that’s what Purdey would have said about her new home. It seemed like everything was too big enough.

Soon after we arrived, Purdey began to behave in a way that I thought then was odd and not a little bit worrying. She would run off into the countryside, disappear for hours then come back obviously having had a great time somewhere. She was also hyperactive and seemed to be wound up by the slightest thing or sound. She followed me absolutely everywhere I went, which was a nuisance when I had the two small children. I wasn’t happy about her roaming the countryside like this. We all have a responsibility to make sure our dogs don’t cause danger or a nuisance to others. But I decided that I had taken this dog on and I was going to stick with her. I owed it to her to help her settle and that’s what I hoped to do. Events, however, soon overtook me.

The first inkling I got that something was wrong was when a local farmer came to see me. He told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not keep this dog under control he was going to shoot her. I was devastated, of course, but I also saw his point because he had livestock and Purdey was obviously running around and worrying the animals. So we put her in the huge, 200-feet garden we had, slipped a rope on her collar and attached it to the washing line so she could go no farther. But she still ran off whenever she could.

Matters took a turn for the worse one cold winter’s morning just before Christmas. I had come downstairs with the children and was going through our usual start-of-the-day routine. Purdey was frantically charging around as she always did first thing in the morning. I remember Ellie was crawling around on the floor, while Tony was playing the ‘little helper’, sorting out a pile of clothes I had in the sitting room. I went into the kitchen which led directly off the sitting room to collect their drinks when I heard a loud crash. I will never forget what I saw when I looked around. The dog had jumped up at Tony and jettisoned him through one of the panes of a sliding glass door. There was broken glass everywhere. From then on it was as if everything was happening in slow motion. I remember Tony looking at me with this stunned, sort of frozen expression as the blood poured from his little face. I remember rushing to Tony, scooping him up and grabbing a clean terry-towelling nappy from a pile of clothes. My days as a St John’s Ambulance volunteer had taught me to check for shards of broken glass. When I was happy that there were none, I began pressing the nappy on to his face, applying the pressure as hard as I could to stem the flow of blood. I then cradled him in my arms and headed for Ellie who was miraculously sitting still in the middle of this sea of broken glass. I scooped her up under my spare arm and sat there on my knees calling for help. All the while Purdey was running around like a lunatic, barking and jumping in the air as if she was playing some huge game.

It was every parent’s nightmare. When help eventually arrived, friends and family were unanimous. Tony’s injuries were awful and would leave him scarred for life. ‘This dog is a bad one, she’s a rogue,’ they said. I still felt responsible for Purdey, however, and was determined to give the dog another chance. She continued getting herself into problems every now and again, but, for a couple of months at least, all was relatively calm.

Then one sunny winter’s morning, just before Ellie’s first birthday in February, I was in another part of the house while Ellie was on the floor playing with her toys, supervised by my mother. The moment I heard my mother scream, I realised something had happened. When I got to the sitting room, my mother just shouted ‘The dog’s bitten her, Ellie did nothing and the dog’s bitten her. The dog’s turned.’ I didn’t want to believe it. But when I saw Ellie had a rather nasty little nick over her right eye I had no option. My head was spinning. Why had this happened? What had Ellie done? Where had my training gone wrong? I knew, however, that the time for questions was over.

As soon as he heard the news my father came round to see me. As a girl I had heard him talk of one of his favourite dogs, an Old English sheepdog cross called Gyp, and how he had ‘turned’. My grandmother had been trying to move him off a sofa and he had snapped at her. In my grandfather’s mind if a dog could turn on the hand that fed it then it was doomed, so Gyp was destroyed. My father did not have to spell it out for me. ‘You know what you’ve got to do, my girl, once they’ve gone, they’ve gone,’ he said sadly. ‘Don’t waste your time, just do it.’ That evening the children’s father came back from work. ‘Where’s the dog?’ he asked me. ‘She’s dead,’ I told him. I had taken her to the vet that afternoon and had her put down.

For a long time, part of me believed I had done the right thing with Purdey. Yet at the same time I always felt that I failed her, that it was my fault not hers. Even when I had her put down, I felt I was deserting her. It took me almost twenty years to confirm my suspicions. What I now know is that Purdey’s behaviour was all caused by my inability to understand that dog, to communicate with her, to show her what I actually wanted. In the most simple terms: she was a dog, a member of the canine not the human family, yet I was using a human language.

Over the past ten years I have learned to listen to and understand canine language. As that understanding has grown, I have been able to communicate with dogs, to help them – and their owners – overcome their problems. On many occasions my intervention has prevented a dog from being destroyed because of its seemingly untreatable behaviour. The joy I have felt each time I have saved a dog’s life in this way has been immense. I would be lying if I did not admit that it is also tinged with regret that I did not learn these principles in time to save Purdey.

The object of this book is to pass on the knowledge I have acquired. I will explain how I arrived at the method I now operate. I will then go on to outline how you can learn this language for yourself. Like all languages it has to be treated seriously. Learn it lazily or half-heartedly and it will only confuse both you and the dog with which you are trying to communicate. Learn it well and I can assure you that your animal will reward you with co-operation, loyalty and love.