Big Dogs and Small Birds

I got Chance as a pup he was on the seventh day in a rescue shelter and was due to be put down that day.  I chose him because he throw himself towards me with ecstasy at the cage wall when I called to him.  He never lost that eagerness and was like that with just about everyone.  I had him for thirteen years and he was a splendid dog.  This one is in memory of Chance.

Big Dogs and Small Birds

I had never lived on an estate before.  Never had to cope with the meanness of small cramped houses and the small cramped spaces around those houses.  We were unemployed with too little money and two many pressures.  Life on the estate began to close in on me.  It wasn’t that the people were so bad; my neighbours were quite nice. It was just that life seemed so awful for everyone.  The only way I could cope was to take the children in their double buggy and walk and walk.  We would cover miles with my dog, Chance, running along side.  When the shopping had to be done, we’d catch the bus and as I struggled with twin buggy, tired toddler, wriggling baby, bags of groceries and my dog up the steps of one bus, the driver muttered, as I paid for my single ticket, “you believe in getting your money’s worth, love!”

The other preoccupation was washing the children.  I gave them a bath every morning and evening.  Don’t ask me why, but it was only when they were bathed and dressed in pyjamas, hair brushed and tucked into bed, that I felt a “good mother”.  Once, when shopping at the local Spar shop on the estate, I’d forgotten my cheque card.  It was only at the check out with a full trolley and two fed up children that I discovered that it wasn’t in my bag.  The shopkeeper would not accept my cheque without it, even with other identification.  What did I do?  I went round the shop and put everything back where it belonged, a full trolley load.  It makes me cringe to think of it.  That I could think so little of my time and energy and be so fearful of causing anyone any offence, even obnoxious shopkeepers.  I was taught to say excuse me and always to apologise.  One day in the queue in the post office this woman pushed in right in front of me.  What did I do, I apologised!  Than later, I’d be angry at my own utter weakness.  Being polite was like having a fatal flaw.  Then I began to change and that was when life on the estate began to really frighten me!  One middle aged woman pushed in, in front of me in the queue in the bank and I tapped her on the shoulder and signalled with my thumb for her to go behind.  She did and this success encouraged me to start sending out more signals.  It was in small ways at first but gradually I became aware that there was a readiness about me to enter the fray.  Like a steel coil inside that was kept constantly tight so that you could unwind on the first person to cross you that day with an instant response.  Aggression is a defensive thing.  When you are cornered economically and socially it is that final withdrawal inside to protect.

Once when walking home we came across a tiny bird on the footpath.  I pointed it out to the children, who looked on in fascination as the tiny bird, instead of flying away, hopped over closer and closer to us.  It finally hopped right between my feet, out of the rain, sheltered by my coat.  It must have fallen out of it’s nest, I concluded, and watched carefully by two boys, I wrapped up a piece of paper in the basket under the pram and gently set the bedraggled bird on it.  When we got home we put it in a box beside the radiator.  I tried to give it something to eat but it was too weak and an hour later it was dead.  My two boys were devastated but it had somehow been inevitable to me.  It had been too young, had got too cold and hadn’t really stood a chance.  I reckon each of us have a tiny, beautiful, fragile bird inside us and sometimes that little bird becomes dangerously vulnerable.

Life on the estate was beginning to eat into my core.  One of my neighbours hung himself; we never knew why.  Next-door Billy and Jean had dreadful fights.  Their little girl would stand at the fence between our small gardens with an awful unchildlike stillness.  My other neighbour, Mary, was dying of cancer and her daughter, Donna, a young unmarried mother, was trying to hold everything together.  One day Donna came in to borrow something and when I asked about her mum, she just put her forehead against the wall and wept.  A young pretty girl, intelligent and funny, and life was wringing her to pieces.  There was just too much pain and not enough love to go around.  Even the tiny toddlers stood around outside growing up in the big bad world of the older children.  It seemed sad that children should have to grow up in packs, like dogs.  Even our dog was finding life on the estate rough.  He had been badly mauled twice.  Once it had been really bad and the vet’s bill crippled us as well.  Other dogs seemed like the people: hostile, defensive and on guard.  One Alsatian was renowned for its vicious nature and would run up and down behind its garden fence, snarling and barking every time someone would pass.  The owner sometimes let the dog out and had repeatedly been reported to the dog warden, because the animal always attacked something.  Once I’d been hoovering in the hallway, when I saw through the glass door, this very Alsatian fighting with a little Chihuahua.  The owner of the little dog, an old bent woman, was ineffectually beating the big dog with a tiny shoelace-type lead that she carried in her hand.  It was having absolutely no effect, of course.  I took the head of my Hoover, and, grabbing the straight pipe section, headed out to help.  I hit the big dog a medium sized blow on the back, but to no avail.  Really getting into the spirit of things I fetched him a harder whack on the back of the head and this time he noticed.  He dropped the little dog, a small matted ball of bloodied fur, and turned to face me.  Another blow caused him to run away but not far.  He really had his killer instinct up by now and tried to circle round me to get at the tiny bleeding dog on the ground.  I told the elderly lady to pick up her dog and carry him home, not taking my eye off the still determined Alsatian.  She lifted the sad little bundle and headed off along the path, but as she turned the corner she shouted “you should keep your bloody Alsatian muzzled, you fucking bitch”.  I stood for a moment bewildered and then I realised that she thought I owned the dog.  She had probably assumed that was the only possible reason I would have got involved.  I went back to my hoovering.  It was kind of funny really when you thought about it long enough.

It was another dog, which was the turning point for me.  I was walking Chance when suddenly a huge mongrel came from nowhere and started fighting with him.  I immediately released Chance from his lead, as from past experience, keeping your dog on a lead while he is being attacked is a recipe for an enormous vet bill.  When loose they can at least run off or defend themselves.  The owner of the other dog came running up and started shouting at me aggressively.  It was the nightmare scenario for me.  A year ago I would have stood praying that the earth would swallow me up.  That it would all end rather than have to endure yet another confrontation.  But looking down, I saw that Chance was standing stiff legged over the other dog, who was lying submissive on the ground.  Dear, placid, good natured Chance had actually won.

Every dog does have its day, as they say.  I turned to face the stream of obscenities from the other dog’s owner and at that moment a thought came to my mind, loud and clear as if someone had whispered it in my ear “she’s smaller than you”.  I took a good pace towards her and steadied myself, looking at her full in the face.  She backed away and I followed.  I really wanted to hit someone and after five years on this estate I was ready to do it.  She took to her heels and ran up her garden path locking her gate behind her.  I stood for a full five minutes thinking about the kind of person I was becoming.  My little bird was fading fast.  As Chance and I walked home I promised both of us that we would leave this estate before something precious was lost.