Читать книгу Parisian Tails - Stephen Hayes - Страница 3

Dogs in this family generally don’t last very long. There have been a few over Stephen’s early childhood but they somehow managed to be given away to better families or they just shot through on us. So it was unexpected that Stephen went ahead and applied for a seeing-eye dog and kept his own counsel without ever revealing that one was in the wings.

Pleased as I was that he would have more mobility in the future, especially with university being a challenge in its own right where a guide-dog would be a godsend. But as with all things comes responsibility and Stephen at first assured us all that a dog would not be an issue for us as he would be the master and carer and we were to keep our distance— lest we corrupt it.

We were told a golden Labrador named Paris (from a P-litter) had been selected and Stephen would have to do intense training and do live-in’s with Paris. That was fine, not a problem from our end.

At my first meeting with Paris—well, that didn’t go over too well. As soon as she crossed the threshold, she saw me and barked ferociously at me while being restrained by her SEDA handler. “That’d be right”, I said, “every female in the family always barks at me sooner or later in this household and this female ain’t any different”.

So Paris came to stay, and such was her nature we all fell head-over-heels for her. It wasn’t enough that she was the ‘hairy-nose’ of the family but she could be very bossy in gaining attention from anyone; especially round the dinner table where she would stare down the sighted patrons and resting her drooling head on their laps while ignoring the blindies in desperate hope of gaining a morsel of food from their plates—and she often did on many occasions.

Paris had style; she had intelligence; she had a blessed way of ignoring you if it interrupted whatever she was doing. Paris was just Paris. Total love to all around her. She was unconditional and doted on the family just as much as we doted on her. She gave safety and companionship to Stephen, made best friends with his siblings Alysha and Molly and left me to pick up the crap. Sounds like a fair exchange of responsibilities.

We knew that age was catching up with her and also knew that she would someday become too ill to go on. What we didn’t expect was it to be so soon. Her lethargy at the park was a tell-tale sign that something was not quite right with her and her ‘menopausal’ behaviour was becoming erratic. And by April 2016, Stephen became a man and made a man’s decision to put Paris to bed for the last time. Such is the loss of Paris that she effected everyone that loved her because Paris is love.

—Dad, 2016