Nadine Williams

One helluva hound-dog day

Oscar in happier days with Foxy in his own backyard.

Oscar has led a dangerous doggie life of late.  His adventures had already seen him find his way through the garden hedge which edges a steep cliff-face drop to our lower barbecue area.  NO worries, I thought,  he always returned at the one word “Treat?’’  Once I heard his pitter patter on the roof of the lower barbecue area which abuts the hedge, but back he scampered when called. However, this incident should have warned me to block the hole in the hedge.

Because yesterday  he did not return from his wanderings.   I could hear him barking incessantly from way below by the barbecue and then suddenly, there was an eerie silence. Not one sound.

I run down the stairs in a panic to hear a faint whimpering.  But where is he amongst the building debris which has cluttered what was once a wonderful outdoor living area?  I peer over the side of our three-metre high retaining wall and there in the thick, tall winter grasses of the neighbour’s back yard is my puppy.  Two huge dogs guard the neighbour’s rear yard and they have sprung into rear guard action.  Both hounds – a German Shepherd and the other, a strange Heinz variety Doberman –  have bounced up from their afternoon rest onto all fours and are barking angrily at the intruder, my petite pooch, who is so small, all I can see of him down below is his little white head.   I imagine he will soon be beheaded in one giant snap of that aggro dog’s jaws.

What to do to woo my wounded doggie back home?  I would break my neck to jump down here so in a nonisecond of fight and flight reaction, I race up to the top of our long block, where it is level with the neighbour’s  yard and jump over the fence calling incessantly for Oscar to return into the loving, rescuing arms of his mistress.

But Oscar, no longer whimpering, but at his feisty best,  seems hell-bent on picking a fight with big Fido.  Now Heinz Variety joins in the battle baying in a frenzy at the intruder as he advances towards him.

I am now screaming in fear as I cannot see my baby (he is only nine months old poor darling). Then,   his small woolly white head begins to bob up above the sea of nasturtium leaves as big as dinner plates.

Onward he struggles up the steep hillside through the nasturtium leaves to the chorus of the barking dog duet.   Finally a very bedraggled, soaked, rat-like doggie eventually arrives to wag his tail at my feet. I sweep him up and race him back into the house, wrapping him like a baby in a big, red towel.

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