Dog days: exclusive video of Brian Sewell reading from his new book Sleeping with Dogs
Passionate about dogs from the age of three, The Evening Standard’s art critic Brian Sewell has written a touching book about the 17 that have shared his life. Below is an extract about Hecate
At 10 full months since her birth Hecate was as big as she would be, but that was more the size of an Italian greyhound than a fully grown whippet and my anxiety for her safety when we reached home was very great; Susie, however, showed no sign of animosity and welcomed her with the common activities of canine greeting. From this I concluded not that in six months she had forgotten her jealousy (I don’t think she ever forgot anything), but that her murderous instincts were directed only towards puppies, later, perhaps, confirmed by her response to Ginevra/Ginny’s litter. The trio settled down in amity, Susie, by then a matronly eight, content to let Hecate snuggle against her on my bed, Ginny at four still willing and eager to race about with Hecate and play all the whippet games, wonderfully fast and beautiful in movement.
Top Dog: Brian Sewell in 2005 with Jack his rescue whippet from the Mayhew home.At the nursing of Ginny’s pups Hecate was a tolerated bystander, a maiden aunt of sorts occasionally shepherding a wanderer back to the nest or disdainfully clearing away a tiny turd. There was more shepherding to do in the garden — deliberately encouraged to become the haunt of birds and thus a tanglewood — and more still when we ventured on walks, for when the three remaining pups were half-grown, we could encounter no one without astonished enquiry (Hecate, too, often mistaken for a pup), during which a wayward pup might wander off.
“What are their names?” everyone asked, and I grew weary of explaining Schubert, Gamage and Spinoza — of whom it seemed no ordinary mortal had ever heard. Why hadn’t I dubbed them Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, the comic characters of my childhood?
Had Hecate been a cat, her nine lives would quickly have been used up …
Hecate was much given to eating and drinking without thought. No visitor holding a glass of wine with languid arm outstretched could drink his fill, for Hecate, with infinite delicacy, would empty it. With friends for dinner installed in the dining room, Hecate busied herself with the glasses left in the sitting-room and licked them clean, and could later be found asleep in an armchair, belly up, snoring on the dregs of whisky, gin and wine. She was adept at picking ripe raspberries and blackberries, her tongue curled round the fruit, easing it away from the core. She crunched the plastic bottle of my mother’s sleeping pills and was discovered deeply unconscious with a purple foam about her lips — I had to slap and shake her while we rushed her to the vet.
Small but perfectly formed: Hecate in 1973 — Sewell’s only pedigree dogOn one of my returns from Turkey she leaped into the car and refused to be removed; forgetting that there was a bag of unsalted peanuts stashed under my seat for an emergency (common in Turkey), I left her there — she emptied it, a whole kilo swallowed by her tiny frame, there to swell in the moisture of her stomach and, undigested and much larger, be painfully excreted in the small front garden. Then the pigeons flocked, caring not at all for the peanuts’ journey through her gut. When the plumber came to mend a pipe, she ate his ball of wire wool, and that, even more painfully, passed through her too; chewing it did her teeth no good and, eventually, most fell out. She went blind, and it was when toothless and blind, but still spritely and beautiful, that in nearby Gloucester Road an Arab in full Arabian fig asked me how much I wanted for her. I demurred. He produced a sheaf of £50 notes and offered five. I shook my head. He increased the offer. I shook my head again, smiled, held up both hands, fingers spread wide, and backed away.
Ginny’s pup Gamage took to running shoulder-to-shoulder with blind Hecate, skilfully steering her at speed past trees, people and bicycles
Running was Hecate’s joyful pastime — mostly running for the sake of it, as fast as she could, to and fro along a line, sometimes in increasingly tight circles in which, like a racing motorcyclist, she seemed to be at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground. She showed little interest in squirrels and pigeons, but one day a complacent wood pigeon ignored her approach until too late and took off too languidly, and she, springing into the air, brought it down and slaughtered it in a flurry of fluttering wings and falling feathers. Moments earlier, children and nannies had been fawning over “such a dear little doggie”, but now they screamed in tears and horror, or buried their faces in the full skirts of furious nannies who threatened me with the majesty of park keepers and policemen.
Brian in the Seventies with Schubert and Gamage leaping for the stick and Trollop in full bark with tiny Hecate behind himHecate’s blindness led to a curious and touching relationship with Gamage, the short-legged and barrel-chested pup in Ginny’s litter. The same height, but much burlier and heavier, Gamage took to running shoulder-to-shoulder with Hecate, skilfully steering her at speed past trees, people and bicycles. Contact seemed the clue to this; nudging to the left was easy to explain if Gamage was at Hecate’s right shoulder — she had only to increase the pressure — but to steer her to the right from the right (which is what she often did) required Hecate to bear to the right immediately she could no longer feel the contact. To me this demonstrated extraordinary intelligence on the part of both dogs. I first observed it in 1978 and they practised it until January 1981, the month of Hecate’s death.
On January 17 Hecate had a devastating stroke that twisted her little body so that the fore part was at a quarter turn from the rear. She could not walk. In no position could she lie comfortably. And blind, she cannot have understood what had happened to her. She was also doubly incontinent, but for the moment this did not matter to me, though I have no doubt that it mattered to her, for she had always been fastidiously clean and rather private in emptying her bowels and bladder. I needed to know if her twisted body would or might untwist, but the vet Rusty’s answer was uncertain.
For five nights I slept on the floor next to her, in touch to reassure her, her pathetic little body supported by cushions, lying on absorbent pads that could easily be changed. In eating and drinking she had to be supported and showed little interest in either. For five days there was no improvement, only inexorable deterioration, and Rusty and I decided that he must do the deed, and that deed done, her twisted little body straightened and she seemed as perfect as she had ever been.
I wrapped her in the child’s blanket that had long been her comforter, put her in a wicker basket and exposed it on the flat roof of the house where rain, sun and wind reduced her to a perfect skeleton.
Sleeping with Dogs is published today by Quartet Books (£12.50).
At 10 full months since her birth Hecate was as big as she would be, but that was more the size of an Italian greyhound than a fully grown whippet and my anxiety for her safety when we reached home was very great; Susie, however, showed no sign of animosity and welcomed her with the common activities of canine greeting. From this I concluded not that in six months she had forgotten her jealousy (I don’t think she ever forgot anything), but that her murderous instincts were directed only towards puppies, later, perhaps, confirmed by her response to Ginevra/Ginny’s litter. The trio settled down in amity, Susie, by then a matronly eight, content to let Hecate snuggle against her on my bed, Ginny at four still willing and eager to race about with Hecate and play all the whippet games, wonderfully fast and beautiful in movement.
Top Dog: Brian Sewell in 2005 with Jack his rescue whippet from the Mayhew home.At the nursing of Ginny’s pups Hecate was a tolerated bystander, a maiden aunt of sorts occasionally shepherding a wanderer back to the nest or disdainfully clearing away a tiny turd. There was more shepherding to do in the garden — deliberately encouraged to become the haunt of birds and thus a tanglewood — and more still when we ventured on walks, for when the three remaining pups were half-grown, we could encounter no one without astonished enquiry (Hecate, too, often mistaken for a pup), during which a wayward pup might wander off.
“What are their names?” everyone asked, and I grew weary of explaining Schubert, Gamage and Spinoza — of whom it seemed no ordinary mortal had ever heard. Why hadn’t I dubbed them Pip, Squeak and Wilfred, the comic characters of my childhood?
Had Hecate been a cat, her nine lives would quickly have been used up …
Hecate was much given to eating and drinking without thought. No visitor holding a glass of wine with languid arm outstretched could drink his fill, for Hecate, with infinite delicacy, would empty it. With friends for dinner installed in the dining room, Hecate busied herself with the glasses left in the sitting-room and licked them clean, and could later be found asleep in an armchair, belly up, snoring on the dregs of whisky, gin and wine. She was adept at picking ripe raspberries and blackberries, her tongue curled round the fruit, easing it away from the core. She crunched the plastic bottle of my mother’s sleeping pills and was discovered deeply unconscious with a purple foam about her lips — I had to slap and shake her while we rushed her to the vet.
Small but perfectly formed: Hecate in 1973 — Sewell’s only pedigree dogOn one of my returns from Turkey she leaped into the car and refused to be removed; forgetting that there was a bag of unsalted peanuts stashed under my seat for an emergency (common in Turkey), I left her there — she emptied it, a whole kilo swallowed by her tiny frame, there to swell in the moisture of her stomach and, undigested and much larger, be painfully excreted in the small front garden. Then the pigeons flocked, caring not at all for the peanuts’ journey through her gut. When the plumber came to mend a pipe, she ate his ball of wire wool, and that, even more painfully, passed through her too; chewing it did her teeth no good and, eventually, most fell out. She went blind, and it was when toothless and blind, but still spritely and beautiful, that in nearby Gloucester Road an Arab in full Arabian fig asked me how much I wanted for her. I demurred. He produced a sheaf of £50 notes and offered five. I shook my head. He increased the offer. I shook my head again, smiled, held up both hands, fingers spread wide, and backed away.
Ginny’s pup Gamage took to running shoulder-to-shoulder with blind Hecate, skilfully steering her at speed past trees, people and bicycles
Running was Hecate’s joyful pastime — mostly running for the sake of it, as fast as she could, to and fro along a line, sometimes in increasingly tight circles in which, like a racing motorcyclist, she seemed to be at an angle of 45 degrees to the ground. She showed little interest in squirrels and pigeons, but one day a complacent wood pigeon ignored her approach until too late and took off too languidly, and she, springing into the air, brought it down and slaughtered it in a flurry of fluttering wings and falling feathers. Moments earlier, children and nannies had been fawning over “such a dear little doggie”, but now they screamed in tears and horror, or buried their faces in the full skirts of furious nannies who threatened me with the majesty of park keepers and policemen.
Brian in the Seventies with Schubert and Gamage leaping for the stick and Trollop in full bark with tiny Hecate behind himHecate’s blindness led to a curious and touching relationship with Gamage, the short-legged and barrel-chested pup in Ginny’s litter. The same height, but much burlier and heavier, Gamage took to running shoulder-to-shoulder with Hecate, skilfully steering her at speed past trees, people and bicycles. Contact seemed the clue to this; nudging to the left was easy to explain if Gamage was at Hecate’s right shoulder — she had only to increase the pressure — but to steer her to the right from the right (which is what she often did) required Hecate to bear to the right immediately she could no longer feel the contact. To me this demonstrated extraordinary intelligence on the part of both dogs. I first observed it in 1978 and they practised it until January 1981, the month of Hecate’s death.
On January 17 Hecate had a devastating stroke that twisted her little body so that the fore part was at a quarter turn from the rear. She could not walk. In no position could she lie comfortably. And blind, she cannot have understood what had happened to her. She was also doubly incontinent, but for the moment this did not matter to me, though I have no doubt that it mattered to her, for she had always been fastidiously clean and rather private in emptying her bowels and bladder. I needed to know if her twisted body would or might untwist, but the vet Rusty’s answer was uncertain.
For five nights I slept on the floor next to her, in touch to reassure her, her pathetic little body supported by cushions, lying on absorbent pads that could easily be changed. In eating and drinking she had to be supported and showed little interest in either. For five days there was no improvement, only inexorable deterioration, and Rusty and I decided that he must do the deed, and that deed done, her twisted little body straightened and she seemed as perfect as she had ever been.
I wrapped her in the child’s blanket that had long been her comforter, put her in a wicker basket and exposed it on the flat roof of the house where rain, sun and wind reduced her to a perfect skeleton.
Sleeping with Dogs is published today by Quartet Books (£12.50).
No comments:
Post a Comment