Jan Fennell - A Dog’s Best Friend

They were not a generation to analyse things in depth, so there was little discussion about the reason for Rex’s behaviour. Whether he was marking territory or simply digging for a hidden bone, they were not interested. All that concerned them was how this was going to be stopped.

George had tried all sorts of things. He had shouted at the dog, and at one point thrown his slipper at him out of frustration. On one occasion, he confessed, he had given Rex ‘a good kick up the backside’. But nothing had worked. People had made all sorts of suggestions and my dad had suggested he build a fence around the rose beds, but George had rejected that.

Ellen, to her credit, tried to defuse the situation. At times, there was an echo of my cousin Doreen’s caring philosophy in her comments. ‘Don’t blame the dog,’ she said on one occasion. ‘It’s only in our eyes that he’s doing bad. He doesn’t know any different.’

This did little to ease George’s frustration – all he could do was curse Rex every time he attacked his roses.

Then, one summer, the solution presented itself in the most unlikely form of Freddie, one of George’s nephews (and my cousins). Freddie was three and the son of George’s and my father’s sister, Mary Ann (known to everyone as Sis). Just as no one referred to Sis by her real name, so we all called Freddie by his nickname – Sticky Fingers. Sis was very relaxed in her parenting and she allowed Freddie to eat as many sweets as he liked. As a result, he constantly had his hands in the sweet jars that sat on everyone’s sideboards in those days. What was really unpleasant was the way he would remove half-eaten sweets or bits of chocolate from his mouth and save them for later. By the time he had left someone’s house after a visit, there were bits of sweet or chocolate stuck to the floor, carpet, furniture – everywhere. It was a particularly unpleasant habit.

He was only three, but I can remember the family having a mini council of war about his behaviour. My mother was very house-proud and wouldn’t have him anywhere near her home. And, slowly but surely, other family members were conveniently forgetting to invite Sis and Fred to family events too.

‘It’s not nice for Sis. We should tell her,’ someone said.

‘But who? I don’t fancy it,’ someone else responded.

It was my father who emerged as the unlikely saviour of the day. One weekend, quite out of the blue, Sis, Fred and Freddie turned up on the doorstep of our home in Fulham. I could almost feel my mother’s blood pressure rising as they made their way into her immaculate living room. Immediately, Freddie spotted our sweet jar and dived in, as was his wont. My father could see my mother panicking and wove her away to make a cup of tea. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Freddie, love,’ he said reassuringly.

Sure enough, within a minute or two Freddie had removed a half-eaten sweet from his mouth. He was about to leave it on a chair when my father moved into action. As Freddie searched for the right spot to deposit the sticky toffee, my father took it off him and promptly deposited it in a nearby bin.

He chose his words carefully. ‘If you take it out of your mouth, Freddie, it goes in the bin and you can’t have it back,’ he said with a smile. He didn’t want to chastise him – just get his message across.

Predictably, it didn’t sink in immediately. At the sight of his sweet being thrown away, Freddie burst out crying and ran off to Sis. When my father explained what had happened, she looked a little embarrassed and had no option but to accept what he said. ‘Be a good boy, Freddie, and listen to your Uncle Wal,’ she said.

It wasn’t long before Freddie was back in the sweet jar. Soon, he was once more reaching to take the sweet out of his mouth. And once more my father moved towards him with his arm outstretched. ‘Is that one going in the bin too, Freddie?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Freddie replied before popping the sweet back in his mouth.

It carried on like this for the hour or so Sis and Fred remained with us, my father spending every minute watching Freddie like a hawk. Each time he went to take a sweet from his mouth my father intercepted him. By the time they were ready to leave the penny had dropped. Freddie was still eating sweets – but he was finishing each one before going on to the next.

My father thought this was a real triumph. When we next went over to George and Ellen’s a week or so later, he took great pride in proclaiming he had ‘cured Freddie’, then telling the story in great detail.

‘He got the message soon enough,’ he said. ‘He saw what would happen if he did the wrong thing.’

Everyone in the family thought it was the funniest thing ever.

‘Why did nobody think of doing that before?’ my Aunt Ellen giggled. ‘It’s so obvious.’

The only one who wasn’t laughing was Uncle George, whom I remember vividly sitting nodding away to himself.

‘You’ve given me an idea there, Wal,’ he said after a while. ‘I might try that with Rex.’

I don’t think anyone was quite sure what he meant. But it became clear when we next went back to their house. This time it was George who was wearing the triumphant expression.

‘I’ve sorted out Rex’s habit of digging up the rose bed,’ he told my father, before going on to explain what had been going on since our last visit.

My father’s success with Sticky Fingers Freddie had lit a light bulb in George’s head. He decided that Rex needed to learn a similar lesson – and immediately set about providing it.

George had been sitting in the garden one evening that week when he’d seen Rex digging away in the rose bed once more. Immediately he’d walked over to him, grabbed him by the collar and marched him unceremoniously into the house, where he’d deposited him in the utility room.

‘I left him in there to have a think about it for half an hour or so,’ he said.

Rex had whined a little, but George had ignored it.

When George opened the utility room door, he found Rex lying there with a sheepish look on his face. Released back into the garden again, he wandered around aimlessly for a while, shooting George the odd glance. A few minutes later, George popped back into the kitchen to talk to Ellen. When he returned he found Rex scratching away in the flower beds again. Without saying a word, he marched over, took Rex by the collar and repeated the operation, this time leaving the dog in the utility room for a few minutes more.

‘I didn’t raise my voice to him or get rough at all. I just did it.’

That had been a couple of weeks ago. Today, as we sat in the garden, Rex was playing with me and the other children as usual. At one stage, the ball he was retrieving ran into the rose beds. He was about to set foot on the soil when he saw George make a move as if to get up. He moved away immediately.

George was clearly feeling chuffed with himself. But then, late in the afternoon, he noticed Rex digging away again – only this time in the compost heap at the far end of the garden. He got up out of his chair but got no reaction. ‘What am I going to do now?’ he asked Ellen.

‘Well, he’s obviously learned something and I’d rather he dug there than in the rose bed,’ she said. ‘Leave him for now.’

This seemed to please George. George admitted to my father that he didn’t enjoy meting out physical punishment. ‘I didn’t like hurting him,’ he said. As the afternoon wore on Rex came over to lie at George’s feet as usual. ‘We understand each other now, don’t we, mate,’ he said ruffling his coat.

George and Rex went on to live a long and happy life together. They were close anyway, but afterwards they seemed even greater pals, happier than ever in each other’s company.