I saved a dog yesterday. He was on fire on a ledge halfway down a cliff. I tethered my own dog to a tree, fashioned a rope from an old bit of rope I found lying around at the top of the cliff, lashed this to the same tree, overcame my fear of heights to lower myself to the ledge, put out the flames using only the power of my mind and then hauled the dog back up to the cliff’s edge to safety. I am brilliant. Obviously, this didn’t happen. You don’t tend to find rope that long just lying about at the top of cliffs. (Too far?) Here’s what did happen.
There I was, walking my dog, Oscar, in Alexandra Park. It was kind of raining, but it’s often kind of raining, so we were having lots of muddy fun. I had put my iPod on shuffle while I threw sticks for Osc, and Gentlemen Take Polaroids came on. This was a good day.
Next thing I knew, there was a large, handsome husky at my side. He seemed to come out of nowhere. I must admit, for a minute I pondered the current whereabouts of David Sylvian: turning into a wolf and appearing wherever his music is appreciated would be just the sort of thing he’d do. The husky was really friendly, obviously well looked-after and tagged up to the nines, so I assumed that he and his owner had separated by mutual consent. They would leave home together, head to the park, get in some off-lead action and alone time before re-joining at some park bench and going home, side by side. This was their thing.
But when, 30 minutes later, he was still with us (despite having encountered several other walking groups of humans and dogs), I started to worry. I only had one lead, and I was going to have to put Oscar on it to navigate the trafficky bits of the walk between us and home. If husky followed me onto the road and got knocked down, I’d never have been able to forgive myself. But there was no sign of an owner. I was going to have to read the tags, take my mobile out of my pocket and call him. And – because I’m brilliant – that’s exactly what I did.
We arranged to meet just outside what I call the Darts entrance to Ally Pally, because it’s the one you see on telly when they’re going in for the Big Darts. I let Oscar off his lead and put husky on it instead – once I was static, I was a lot less interesting to him and I didn’t want him to wander off: that would have deprived me of hero status and I was all about the saving-and-being-seen-to-save right now.
When the owner arrived (not a minute too soon – Oscar had started to put himself between me and husky in a very jealous manner), you have never seen such excitement. The poor dog – happy enough to trot along while there was a walk to be had – had been just as stressed as his owner. It turned out that the owner had been roaring his voice out across the park for an hour, desperately calling his seemingly-vanished best friend. Thank goodness for tags and mobile phones. And for unsung heroes.
I’m actually not referring to myself here, although I am brilliant. Spare a thought today for the guys who work in those heel-bars with engraving machines. They’re the ones who put phone numbers on dog-tags, and everyone thinks it’s easy. They may be able to do it by computer now, but it’s still a great service to the canine community. If it hadn’t been for the heel-bar guys, husky might have had to come and live with me. And that would never have worked…unless he likes Japan.
