It’s Friday afternoon and, as is my habit at the end of the working week, I am haunting each room of the house in turn, without purpose or expectation. In the sitting room, I find my wife, putting on shoes.
“Oh,” she says. “Are you coming to walk the dogs with me?”
“Oh,” I say. “I guess.”
There is only one dog lead to hand, but the journey to the park is only a few steps. My wife puts the lead around the neck of the old dog, and we cross the road.
“When I’ve only got one lead, I always put it on that one,” I say, pointing to the little dog. “Stupid’s more unpredictable than old.”
“That one,” my wife says, indicating the old dog, “is considerably dumber than that one.”
“Exactly wrong,” I say.
“There it is!” my wife shouts. This is a signal for the little dog to run off in pursuit of an imaginary squirrel. After a moment, it trots back, disappointed and not a jot wiser.
A family of three – a father and his two young daughters – are wobbling towards us on bicycles. They all smile at us as they pass, but they give the dogs wary looks and a wide berth, even going so far as to turn off the path and on to the grass.
“It’s hard to tell whether people are afraid of dogs,” my wife says, “or whether they hate them.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” I say.
“Or if they just think dogs are dirty or something,” she says.
“Dogs are dirty,” I say.
“Where is it?” my wife shouts. “There!”
The little dog runs off in the direction my wife is pointing. When we catch up, we find it staring up into a tree at an imaginary squirrel. On the ground, on the opposite side of the trunk, is an actual squirrel.
“I don’t see what’s intelligent about that,” I say.
“You don’t understand dogs,” my wife says.
The smaller of the two cycling girls appears from around the corner, having circled the park. Her father and sister are well behind her and still out of sight. The old dog is standing sideways on the path just ahead of us, staring into space. A scenario that seems eminently avoidable quickly becomes inevitable: the tiny bicycle either has no brakes or the child has forgotten how to apply them; the old dog possesses nothing in the way of reflexes. At first everything seems to be happening in slow motion, until I realise that the girl on the bicycle is actually going really slowly.
The girl lets out a blood-curdling scream as the bicycle’s front tyre hits the dog broadside. The dog goes down. The bike tips over, and there is a terrible clatter of pedals. Dog, bike and little girl are all lying in a heap. My initial assessment of the situation is: this is socially irretrievable.
Fortunately, my wife has sharper instincts. “Oh dear!” she says, scooping up the little girl. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” the little girl says.
I pick up the old dog and set it carefully back on its legs. It limps in circles.
“Let’s pop you back on, then,” my wife says, holding the bike steady. “There we are.”
“Thank you,” the little girl says in a small voice.
“Ready?” my wife says. “Off you go!” The girl wobbles around the corner. A few seconds later, the father and the other little girl appear. We exchange broad, cordial smiles as they pass.
“Phew,” my wife says.
We encounter them twice more before we get all the way round the park, and each time the old dog steps off the path and watches until the whole family has gone by.
Now that’s intelligent, I think.
