91) A Funny Puppy

While we had been away the boys had been pretty good about the housework, the place was not too much of a mess but there was a mountain of ironing to do. They had obviously not ironed a thing unless it was absolutely necessary and then only at the last moment before putting it on. But they had looked after our puppy so we did not mind. She seemed to have grown a lot while we were away and now that we were back it was time to train her. She was always a very teachable dog and it did not take long before she was house trained.

One day when she was only about three months old I was in the kitchen and she was playing in the courtyard. A bird flew into her mouth. I was sure it must have flown into her mouth as she was too small to have caught it, so it must have tried to commit suicide. I got such a shock I jumped up and screamed “No” in a very loud voice. Poor little Muffin got such a fright that she dropped the bird and it flew away. She must have remembered this all her life, as she never tried to catch birds. Even when I would feed them and they would pick up seeds just in front of her nose, she would just ignore them, almost as if she had not seen then at all.

When she was only a few weeks old a workman knocked on the front door and she started barking. I let the man in and she continued to bark until I went and patted her and told her that everything was all right. She was no bigger than the man’s foot but she was determined to fulfil her roll of watchdog and guardian. As she got older and larger she got more and more enthusiastic about her job. If anyone beyond the immediate members of the family called she would bark viscously and she was a very frightening sight even though she was still small. As she grew, when she got too big for me to pick up and quieten I would have to put her choke chain on her and hold her until the visitors had sat down. Once she had been allowed to sniff them out and make sure that they were acceptable to her she was fine. Then she would become the best of friends and would sit on their laps if they gave her any encouragement. It was a bit of a nuisance to have to introduce her to any and everyone who called but it was a good thing too as she would not let any stranger into the house and it did not take her long to become anyone’s friend. She was really a softie at heart and would not hurt a fly.

Doberman’s ears naturally bend over and lay flat against their heads but some people liked them to have erect ears and so they were often cropped and made to stand up straight, a practice that is now outlawed in most countries. I read once that there had been a time when Doberman breeders had tried to breed their dogs with erect ears, like German Shepherd’s, but they had not succeeded. I remembered that Jack Lawrence who was the Chairman of the Doberman Club of Salisbury when I was the secretary had a Doberman who’s ears would stand up on their own now and again and he would laughingly say that it was a pity that she had been spayed as he would be able to get a fortune for her from a breeder that wanted to breed their dogs with stand up ears. One afternoon I was sitting on our back veranda, watching the dogs playing together and I saw that Muffins ears were standing up straight. I called Dominic to bring his camera but by the time he got there the ears had gone down again. I told Dominic I wanted a photo of her ears like that as people would never believe me unless they saw it for themselves. A few days later her ears stood up again and this time we were quicker with the camera and managed to get a photo of her stand up ears. For the next few days we took a photo of her and her ears every chance we could get so that we could show all the people who would never believe us. After a few days her ears were up all the time and we realised that they would be staying that way and ‘they’ would have to believe us. I often wonder where Jack Lawrence has gone, as I would have liked to show him Muffin’s ears, I think he would have been impressed.

It would not have been so bad if they had been the type of ears that were meant to stick up, but these were defiantly the lay flat design and so they looked very odd. The children in the street once asked me if “it was a Bokkie?” (a little antelope ). She made me think of that poem by G.K. Chesterton called The Donkey, one verse goes: -

With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil's walking parody On all four-footed things.

Poor little Muffy, she would have been quite a beauty if it were not for those ears. People would ask what kind of dog she was and some did not believe that she was a Doberman. Our friend David Arnold always called her our ‘donkey’.

I decided that I wanted to train her and started when she was about three months old. I would put her on the lead and take her for a walk into some open ground at the end of the road. Sometimes Claudia would come with us too. Muffin learnt quickly to walk to heel and to sit, stand and stay. Once we had done our training exercises I would take off the lead and she would quiver with excitement until I told her “Off you go and play”. Then she would run around and enjoy her freedom. There was a short cut through the piece of ground that the African servants working in the suburb used to get to the main road to catch their buses home after work. Jonny did not like me going there each evening, as he did not think it was safe. I felt very safe as Muffin tended to bark at anyone she saw there. I would then call her to my side and get her to walk to heel until the passer-by had gone. She learnt this quickly too and if she saw someone before I did she would come to me from where ever she was and neatly walk beside me until I told her that she could “go and play”. Many years later when we were living in Natal and I had taken her for a walk in the sugar cane fields and was surprised that she came bounding up to me and walked to heel without my telling her to. We walked a little further on and met an African farm worker coming in the other direction. I had not seen him but Muffin had and she had remembered the lesson of all those years ago even though she had not had to use it for such a long time.

Besides funny ears Muffin had a bit of an identity crisis. She thought she was a Maltese Poodle. She loved to sit on laps, particularly Jonny’s. As Jonny sat watching TV she would sidle up to his outstretched legs and sit on his feet. She would wait a little while to see how he was going to take it and would then drape herself along his legs. Again a little pause and her next move would be to reverse her body on to his lap, where she could watch TV with her “Dad”. If the programme was not to her liking she would turn her back on the set, curl around and put her head on Jonny’s shoulder and go to sleep in that position.

She hated to be ignored and if we were talking about something and she was not included she would position herself between us and join in the conversation. She would look at who ever was talking and put her head to one side as if she was thinking about her opinion on the subject. She looked so funny that we would usually end up laughing at her and she was just happy that we weren’t ignoring her any more.

Jonny brought a piece of old rubber conveyor belting from the mine, for her to play with. She loved her toy and Jonny, Jonathan or Dominic would hold one end and she would hold the other end in her mouth and they would play tug of war. She would pick it up and wander around looking for someone to play with her. She learnt that by putting her paw on to the belting and twisting it before she picked it up she could make a new kind of toy with it. She held it in her mouth and by opening and closing her mouth she could make the two ends of the rubber slap against each other producing a lovely clapping sound. Again this was a great attention getter but she went even further. Once while she was trying to get the rubber into her mouth she got her paw caught in the loop of the rubber and had to hop around on three legs. She looked so funny, and got a big laugh. I am sure it was only an accident the first time but she knew when she was on to a good thing and would often do this as a party trick when she was feeling that she needed a little more attention.

Please come and play with me!

Muffin soon learnt the meaning of the word ‘walk’ and as soon as we discussed taking her for one she would get so excited and noisy that we could not hear ourselves think. She would bark and go to where her lead was kept and cry and run round in circles until we were ready to go. We gave up saying the word and would spell out W.A.L.K. It was not long before she learnt to spell and so W.A.L.K. had to become ‘ a W.’ She would watch what shoes we were putting on and knew which were W shoes and start her antics. It became a game to see if we could get ready for our “W” put on our shoes, fetch her lead and get to the gate before she had discovered our intentions, but for the most part she was too quick for us.
Everyone who knew her thought she was a clown. She certainly had character and was a very spoilt dog. Jonny always said that I had spoilt her but anyone with half a brain could see that it was all his fault.