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

delectable things with her signature, much as we underline a book we are reading.
    Tulip has no scruple about wetting herself with her urine, and does so every morning when she visits my terrace: an event, incidentally, which she never troubles to report. If I wish to inform myself about it I can easily do so by feeling her hind legs, a piece of intimacy which she perfectly understands and which always amuses us both. Nor does she seem to mind other dogs wetting her, for it happens that, when she is easing herself on the Embankment below, some local dog, excited perhaps by the fresh scent of her glandular discharge, may lift his leg over her rump as she squats. But as I have already shown, she takes elaborate care not to soil herself with her feces, and displays a similar distaste for those of other adult dogs. Though she may venture an extremely cautious inquiring sniff at such things that lie in her path, she will then give them a markedly wide and disdainful berth; if she should happen to tread in one by accident, she flickers her foot and limps as though she had gone lame.
    But her sensitivity can be more vividly illustrated if, Tulip permitting, I continue the journey we were attempting to make a short while ago and recount our experiences when we first went country visiting. Very few of my country friends ask her to stay with them; they mostly go in for cats who go out for Tulip; those who have no pets of their own are a little forgetful about inviting her twice; her unconquerable belief that every building we enter, even a railway carriage, belongs from that moment exclusively to us, may have something to do with it; people seem to resent being challenged whenever they approach their own sitting or dining rooms.
    Our first host was a Captain Pugh, who had served with me in France in the 1914 war. I had seen nothing of him for a great many years, then he suddenly turned up again as people do and asked me down to stay. He was farming in Kent. How can an urban dog owner go into the country without his dog? I said I should be delighted to come if I could bring Tulip. It appeared, however, that Mrs. Pugh, of whom, until then, I had never heard, kept Cairns, and although I assured Pugh that Tulip was very partial to little dogs, negotiations were suspended. Then Mrs. Pugh went off with her Cairns for a night elsewhere, my invitation was renewed to include Tulip, and she and I traveled down into Kent together.
    Actually I remembered very little about my host, except that he had been an officer who had managed to combine great courage and efficiency with a marked indolence of habit. Whenever, for instance, he had wanted his servant or his orderly, as he frequently did, it had been his custom to fire his revolver into the wall of his dugout—one shot for the servant, two for the orderly—to save himself the exertion of shouting. An odd figure, and, as I was to discover, set in his ways; his whims were, indeed, to contribute to the misfortunes that befell us beneath his roof.
    He emerged from a cowshed as we entered his extensive domain, and guided us up to the house. Poultry came into view, pecking about on either side of the long drive, and Pugh interrupted his conversation about old times to remark briefly that he hoped Tulip would not “go after” them as they were laying rather well at present. I hoped not too; but she had met hens only once before, so I had no means of telling whether she would recall the smacking she had received on that occasion. I could have put her on the lead, I suppose, and that may have been what Pugh was hinting at; but how can one gauge the intelligence of one’s animal if one never affords it the chance to display any? And, to my astonishment and pride, only one sharp cautionary word was needed, when I saw her tail go up and a wolfish gleam enter her eye, to remind her of her lesson: the poultry were passed unscathed. Indeed, we should have gained Pugh’s residence in