Tempy
Someone said that Pugs are living proof that God has a sense of humour. Maybe. This guy, I could believe it of.
Personally, I’m more inclined to give the credit to the breeders, since there are very few Pugs in the fossil record.
I am far from being an expert on the history of the breed, but I am told that modern Pugs are much slimmer, longer and leggier than the original breed. The person who told me this was explaining her own dog, whom she fondly referred to as an “old fashioned build”. In fact – how can I say this kindly? Her dog had the dimensions and weight of a small bar fridge.
This little bulldozer was a charmer who rejoiced in the name of “Temporary”, or Tempy for short. His owner had been watching a TV programme about some rednecks who had named their daughter Temporary, and thought it would be absolutely hilarious to call the dog by this name. I don’t know if he ever got promoted to “Permanent”.
Tempy had a sunny disposition, as Pugs do. He wasn’t athletic, as Pugs aren’t, but he did like a gentle walk, provided conditions were right. Not too hot, not too cold. Not too far, not too fast. He was meant to be walked on a harness, as of course among the other difficulties their pushed in faces cause, this breed can have trouble breathing, especially in hot weather.
One day I was strolling along on a walk with Tempy. He favoured a a glacial pace when it came to anything resembling exercise. I happened to glance down to see how he was doing. He was doing just fine, thank you very much, trundling along beside me, breathing stertorously.
That’s when I realised that, while I thought I was walking Tempy, in fact I was walking an empty lead. Tempy was no longer attached to his harness. He had strolled right out of it. Fortunately, Tempy wasn’t the “Over the hills and far away! Let’s go adventuring!” kind of dog. It was still a heart stopping moment. Our worst fear was losing a dog.
After that, we decided to walk Tempy on a collar. The weather was cool and it wasn’t as if he was going to be pulling against the lead anyway. We felt that on balance, the danger of impeding his breathing was minor. We would watch him carefully, and if he seemed to be experiencing any distress, we would just abort the walk.
I found a collar and put it on him before walking him the next day. The good news was that the collar caused Tempy no problems at all. The bad news was, the reason the collar caused him no problems was that the collar kept coming off. Bar fridges have no necks. It was like buckling a collar on a Christmas pudding. Fortunately, he never ran off when he became unhooked.
His superpower was inertia.
That worked in our favour.
The next walk fell to John. He left the building with Tempy. In short order, he came racing back in, yelling that the dog was having some sort of fit. I hurried outside and sure enough, there was Tempy, just beyond the door, lying on his side with his legs sticking straight out in the air, stiff as a board. Oh no!
I thought he was having a seizure. But when I touched him and talked to him, he rolled his eyes in my direction and unstiffened, like one of those vacuum packs when you let air inside. After several tries, I managed to pick him up, which was no mean feat since he had no angles at all on which to get a grip and had the dead weight of a black hole. I got him up notwithstanding these challenges, carried him into the common room and put him down on a couch. Whereupon he sat up, looked at me with bright eyes, his tongue lolling out, every aspect of his demeanor saying, “What?”
He then turned around, made himself comfortable and settled in to watch Animal Planet on TV.
On questioning John, it transpired that basically, Tempy had just decided that the walk portion of the programme was called that day on account of ‘Tempy not wanting no walkies’. He came out the door, then refused to go any further. When John failed to get the message and attempted to move him along, he did his imitation of a corpse.
See? Communication’s not so hard. All you need is the right tools. In this case, an indomitable will, the dimensions and weight of a small barge and a flair for the dramatic.