Further adventures of Morris the Bull Terrier

Terry Doe

I haven't inflicted one of these on you for a while, so here we go for a bit of classic Morris misdoings. Hope you like it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

DOWN AT THE OLD BULLY AND BUSH
When I first sat down to write this month’s Morris piece, I had the subject neatly arranged and thoroughly researched. I was planning to ask the readership why several dozen of you have, during the past few years, requested that Morris be introduced to your own girly bull terriers, with a view to creating a wee posse of Morrisettes. It’s a fair question, is it not?

Despite - indeed, because of - the traumas that Morris has so regularly put me through, there are people out there who wish to embrace my brand of misery by re-creating him. This intrigues and slightly spooks me, yet it’s true. Sadly, I was unable to attend this year’s Crufts, but the sturdy old sorts on the Dogs Today stand informed me that yet more would-be masochists requested details of Morris, with a view to committing Morris-breedage of the first degree. I say again, why on earth would anyone contemplate such a thing?

Do they intend to give a puppy to someone they loathe? Perhaps these folk are planning an insurance scam on their house and contents, using a Morris clone to destroy it from within so that they can claim new stuff? Or, perhaps the desirees of a Morris-hund have recently waved goodbye to their teenage children, and feel a parental need for something else that eats like a hippo, farts in company and trashes the house on a regular basis.

Anyway, my musings on the structure of this month’s article were totally short-circuited when a glance into the garden showed Morris eating a lavender bush. Normally, when I catch him mid-scoff with something forbidden, I attempt to use the incident as aversion therapy. By arriving all displeased-like and scowling ferociously at him as I dispossess him of his latest chewy treat, I still cherish the idea that he’ll connect my displeasure with the object he’s crunching into oblivion and avoid a repeat. I am a fool for investing the slightest hope in this strategy but I cling to the idea that, one day, the penny may drop in Morris’s head, albeit with a hollow and resounding ‘splush’.

This time, I decided to allow Morris to graze upon the lavender bush until he exploded. I was alone in the house, so there was no chance of the children interfering with this groundbreaking experiment, and I was determined to see just how much of the bush that stupid bloody dog would devour. For those who don’t own lavender bushes, allow me to describe one to you. At this time of year (mid March, we work ages ahead on this magazine) a lavender bush is little more than a herbaceous afro of dried twigs, last year’s dead flowers and the odd greeny bit to show you that it’s still vaguely alive and shouldn’t be dug up. It is not remotely edible-looking. Even the usual list of garden plague-bugs won’t go near it at this time of year. Yet, there was Morris scarfing down gobfulls of the stuff, and licking rapturously at any really woody stems he couldn’t snip off and swallow.

I watched this madness for over 20 minutes, until I could stand it no longer and stormed into the garden to scowl at Morris in my usual ineffective manner. He responded to my snarl of ‘Whaddayoudoin, you sod!’ by snatching a last mouthful of lavender bush and slinking off back to his kennel to digest a bellyful of fragrant fronds. Meanwhile, I just stared at a bush with a dirty great lump out of one side, wondering what on earth had climbed into my dog’s lame brain this time. I concluded that it was just another demonstration of the fact, that, the Good Lord had installed another bowel where Morris’s central nervous system should be.

Then, a few days later, I was writing one of my desperately witty speeches, while the boys took charge of the barbeque. From what I could see from my office, we were about to be treated to exploded sausages, gnarled black burgersh objects and chicken drumsticks so fire-hardened that they had definite hand-to-hand combat potential. The burgeresque offerings had been sacrificed over the coals in a fire-blackened tray, which now brimmed with congealed fat and carbonised, meaty particles. How did my worthy sons empty this utensil? They grabbed it with a pair of tongs and tipped its slimy contents into the very lavender bush that Morris had been scoffing.

We’d had our first barbies of the year mere days before Morris had lunched on lavender salad. The mystery was solved. Rather than the lunatic browsing of a tasteless bush, Morris had been nibbling an anointed herb. It’s tiny victories like this that keep me going, you know. And this one kept me going right up to the time the boys told me that they’d never, ever emptied the barbeque tray on that lavender bush before. Oh well, at least Morris’s farts had a pot-pourri pong about them for a day or two. Tiny victories, folks - and getting tinier by the day.

--------------------------------- E N D ------------------------------------