My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerley Read Free Book Online

it but to circumambulate the station again, and resignedly I hitch my load higher up my back. Round the station we go, Tulip staring at me as though I have taken leave of my senses. I glance at my watch. Time is passing if nothing else. I call her to me and massage her, her back, her stomach, squeeze her indeed. She enjoys this and becomes flirtatious. Maddening dog! Whatever possessed me to possess her! It will be a miracle now if we catch our train. Worn out before the journey has begun, I sit down on a wall at last and stare moodily at her … .
    But I fear I may be presenting her in an inconsiderate, even insensitive, light, and that will not do. She too has her feelings, and now that I have put the human point of view it is proper to attend to hers, and to make, also, a few brief observations on what are commonly regarded as the insanitary habits of dogs, whose manners, on the whole, seem to me admirable.
    Like many other animals, adult dogs have an instinct for what may be called a comfortable and cleanly modesty over the particular bodily function I have been discussing, and some of my country friends tell me that their dogs evince a scrupulosity as strict as our own in their desire to perform it in seclusion. But to a town dog the outside world is too difficult a problem. Opportunities for privacy are rare, and though Tulip may often be seen to take advantage of them when they appear to offer, as when she turns through an open gate into someone’s front garden, peace and quiet are seldom the reward she reaps. Whatever choice for modesty she makes, in short, is pretty sure to be wrong; she even earned a rebuke once for using a public lavatory, and not on the grounds that it was a Gentlemen’s. She had followed me down into it, and was taking no greater advantage of the place than to micturate a little in the stall beside my own, when the attendant rushed out and shooed her away.
    â€œI’ve got to bucket that over now!” he complained bitterly. “They’re not allowed down ’ere, gov.”
    It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that in the course of years her sensibilities should have become blunted. But she has them still, and they are more easily perceived indoors.
    I have no grounds or garden into which she may retire and conceal herself behind a rhododendron bush. All I can offer her is an open-air terrace, and this, she knows, is at her disposal for any purpose whatever. But perhaps because she also knows that I sometimes sit on it myself, she only uses it for the major function when she cannot wait. And then she always comes to tell me. I may be shaving in the bathroom, when Tulip will suddenly arrive with the air of one who has grave tidings to impart, and move around me in a bashful manner, trying to catch my eye. I know at once what her news is and allow myself to be led out to inspect it. Then I get a pail of water and sluice it away, while she looks on with manifest satisfaction.
    If canine feces are objectionable to the human race, they are rejected by dogs as well. This may seem an overstatement to those people who observe, with pained disapproval, the ways dogs greet each other in the street, and put upon such behavior a perverse and unhygienic construction. But what the animals are investigating here is that secretion of the anal glands to which I have already referred, the scent of which provides them with information.  [2] Whatever perversity there may be in this matter is exhibited by people themselves when, in their endeavor to impose their own standards of conduct upon their dogs, they prevent them from smelling one another’s bottoms.
    Dogs read the world through their noses and write their history in urine. Urine is another and highly complex source of social information; it is a language, a code, by means of which they not only express their feelings and emotions, but communicate with and appraise each other. Tulip is particularly instructive in this