GUIDE DOGS:
MAXINE JONESlooks back on her year as a puppy walker with a golden Labrador named Zebedee, who is currently gracing the December page of the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind calendar
I DON'T PARTICULARLY LIKEdogs. I'm quite fond of my two cats, who don't ask for much. But yesterday, in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, I saw a man cradling a golden Labrador pup, its eyes closing, its tubby belly upwards. On its lead was a label saying "puppy in training".
"He's worn out. We've just walked the legs off him down the pier," said the man. His wife explained that they would look after the pup, taking it everywhere with them, for a year. Then it would be taken back to be trained as a "working dog". I knew then that I would get one; I just had to rationalise it.
I'd resisted my youngest son's demands for a dog for years, but this was a way of giving it back when it was no longer an endearing Andrex puppy and my son had proved he wouldn't walk it or pick up poo. Also, it wouldn't cost me anything. Irish Guide Dogs pays for all food, equipment and vet bills. Even the inconvenience factor was lowered, as guide-dog pups are allowed where other dogs aren't, and if you go on holiday someone else will mind it.
In the back of my mind, I was hoping my two older sons would also engage with it and we could develop a semblance of family closeness. But being honest, I was taking this on mainly for myself. A dog would be company and would disguise my increasing habit of talking to myself.
October 17th, 2007
The dog is due to be driven from Cork to Dublin this morning, separated from siblings and mother and placed with us - one 51-year-old downtrodden mother, one quietly delinquent 16-year-old, one more rambunctiously delinquent 14-year-old, and a 12-year-old who holds it all together - although he is increasingly prone to his own sulks and bouts of swearing.
"The poor dog," my sister says. "They can't turn lights off or let the cats out. They'll never look after it."
Mairead, the dog trainer, a no-nonsense type who puts manners on us all, is to phone with an exact time this morning. When the phone rings I leap on it. It is Conor, my 16-year-old. "Mum. I've been caught shoplifting. You have to come down here." Conor's gentle demeanour gets him away with a lot, but this time his luck may have run out. It holds. He is let off after he pays for the chewing gum. I watch him walk away, plugging in his iPod headphones. Marcus's school phones. He is being cheeky to the maths teacher and doing no work. I am to go in tomorrow.
It's Wednesday, a half day, and all three boys are home when the dog arrives.
"They're here. They're here," shouts Tiernan from his bedroom window and rushes down the stairs and into the street in his socks.
I open the front door to Mairead, carrying and mostly hidden by an enormous bag of dog food. I take it from her - it weighs a ton - and dump it in the kitchen. Behind Mairead comes her assistant carrying a tiny yellow bundle, which is placed outside in the garden and duly wees, to the command, "Busy, busy."
Marcus and Conor have to be shouted down from their rooms such is their real or feigned indifference. Mairead looks me direct in the eye and sees my soul. She shows me that two ounces is about a cup full of food. I am to add a few drops of water and feed Zebedee four times a day. I must put the dog outside, repeating, "Busy, busy," and praise her lavishly when she wees and poos.
Then Mairead and her assistant jump in their van, which sports a big puppy on the side, and are gone. The puppy is very hungry. We place her bowl by the kitchen step. She pushes the bowl over the side in her eagerness to eat every last morsel and tumbles down after it, continuing to eat where she and the bowl land.
At dinner I read out bits from the manual about dog hierarchies and how we must put ourselves first - eating our meals before feeding the dog, having the best beds, on which the dog is not allowed, and occasionally sitting in the dog's bed just to show we can.
October 19th, 2007
Zebedee is always pleased to see me. And when I walk down the road, everyone wants to know me. Following Mairead's instructions, I put a collar and lead on Zebedee for the first time and meet Tiernan from school. He is mortified to see me and only slightly mollified when he sees I am with the dog. A big crowd gathers around us, and I have a conversation with every single person on the short route to the school.
Mairead has given me a list of the things the dog should be learning to do this week. I thought we'd be contained inside for a few days, like a new mother and baby, but there I am out on the street on day two, in a totally altered world.
October 20th, 2007
It's good to wake up and have a definite, immediate purpose in life. Mine is to see that the dog empties its bladder. I leap up, full of life and hope. Even seeing the mess of the kitchen the boys swore they would clear does not bring me down for long. A little yelp and a wagging tail and I'm smiling and muttering endearments.
October 25th, 2007
Walking back with the dog after meeting Tiernan from school, a lanky boy with braces stops his bike to talk to us. "I miss my dog," he says."My parents split up and we couldn't keep him." I'm moved to silence as he props up his bike to pet the dog.
Old ladies empathise most with the dog. Young mothers are wary, fearing they'll be besieged with requests from their offspring. "I've enough on my plate," one says, her brusque tone covering up a flash of longing.
Zebedee and I are spotted by a posse of 11-year-old girls who are walking past the post office, where we are in line. In one squealing mass, they make a run for her, and cover her in a cloud of pink. Zebedee loves it, licking their faces in turn. Just as suddenly, the girls take flight and flutter off, regrouping outside to discuss how sweet she is. I buy my book of stamps and, half-way back towards the door, watched by the cashiers and the people in line, I feel a tug at the leash as Zebedee squats. I pick up the mess quickly and drag her out, calculating where else I can buy stamps in future.
November 19th, 2007
Zebedee has now had all her injections and can officially be taken anywhere. We attend our first puppy class, where the size of most of the "puppies" overwhelms us both. At seven months, Zebedee will be the size of a small racehorse, it seems to me. They thunder over and flatten her. Submerged, she utters a muffled squeak and I feel a surge of parental panic.
March 13th, 2008
I wake the boys early, taking away their duvets, and tell them all to come downstairs. Then I lock them out in the garden with plastic bags and don't let them in until they've picked up all the dog poo in the garden.
It's stormy weather. If it wasn't for the dog, I wouldn't have set foot outdoors, but when I get to Killiney beach the winds have whipped up a fresh blue sky and the sun is glinting off silver ripples in the sea.
Constantly fussed over as a pup, Zebedee, now aged six months, is more likely to send people running scared. Her friendliness is insatiable and she is undeterred when small girls scream and old dogs snarl.
The boys love her, even Marcus, the belligerent middle one. When the alarm is raised that Zebedee is missing, he is the first out the door to scour the streets. This boy, who barely grunts, douses the dog in endearments when he thinks I'm out of earshot.
July 4th, 2008
The dog is now 10 months old. She is big enough to reach the table and countertop, and has taken to opportunistic food thefts. Today she swallows a raw egg, a wedge of Wensleydale and a box of After Eights. She is moulting in mounds, filling the hoover every two days.
There is little in the house that doesn't bear her teeth or claw marks. She has chewed up pens and pencils, runners, Conor's mobile phone, the laundry basket, my glasses case, and the internet and phone cable.
We are charged with instilling good habits, rather than training as such. She doesn't jump up, bark or sit on furniture, and is used to traffic, shopping centres, lifts, going on buses, the Dart, the Luas and has even been on the ferry to England and stayed in a hotel.
October 1st, 2008
Zebedee is still with us, and treasured more each day. She is a calm, mature, loyal and loving dog.
October 14th, 2008
11am. "It's the call," says Mairead. She will collect Zebedee on Monday morning in the van with the puppy on the side to drive her down to Cork to begin her guide-dog training.
HALF-WAY THROUGHher training the boys and I go to visit Zebedee. We watch at a distance as she is put through her paces, wondering at how obedient she has become. When we make ourselves known to her, she is ecstatic, leaping and bounding, as mad as a pup again. We introduce her to our new dog, rescued from the dog pound shortly after Zebedee left.
Zebedee hangs in until near the end of the guide-dog training, when she is transferred to the assistance-dog scheme, as she is inconsistent in the harness. She is assigned to a family in Cork with an autistic child.
The new dog is proving a challenge, justifying all my doubts about having a dog in the first place. I blame Zebedee for turning me into a dog person. There's no going back.
For details of the Puppy Walker scheme, see www.guidedogs.ie, Locall 1850-506300