Luca

My name is Luca. Actually that wasn’t my registered name – my Mom’s breeder, Auntie Jane, called me King Kool. It had to start with “K” because my litter was the 11^th she had bred and it goes alphabetically. My Mom’s name is Misha and my grandpa was Louis. He had a longer name, and I am told he was a triple champion show dog, but I have forgotten it. I am a pedigree Pembrokeshire Welsh Corgi – the same breed favoured by Her Majesty, Elizabeth II, the reigning Queen of England, and made famous by that worthy dynasty. But more of that anon.

I was born in May 2003. When I was still very small, still suckling from my Mom, but after my eyes had opened properly, some people came to visit our house to have a look at my Mom and her new litter.  One was a middle aged man and he had with him two young girls, aged 11 and 8, who I assumed were his daughters. They seemed very excited. We – my brothers and sisters and I - were in a sort of playpen – Mom was taking a rest from feeding us. We were still quite unsteady on our feet then, and we were stumbling our way around the pen, play-fighting, tumbling and doing the kind of things puppies do. The girls picked some of us up, cuddled us, made excited noises and then left. That was in June.

I didn’t think of them again until about a month later. By then we were eating puppy chunks and Mom had stopped letting us drink from her. That hurt, but hey, life is tough. One Sunday afternoon the door bell rang. Mom and Grandpa barked furiously. We all pricked up our ears, or would have if we could have gotten them up. Lo and behold, it was the man and his girls again. He sat with Aunty Jane over at the dining room table for what seemed like a long time. She seemed to be explaining something to him – slowly, patiently – maybe he wasn’t too bright. Then Aunty Jane came across and picked me up. Great, I thought, maybe I am getting a treat! Not so – she put me carefully in a box, with a wire mesh window, closed the door and bolted it. I was confused – this was new territory. I had been in a cage before, when we went to the vet for our injections, but we were all together. This time, I was alone and I wasn’t happy.

The box swayed back and forth and I felt vaguely seasick. I was carried toward the door. The girls were skipping around, back and forth, making excited noises. We went out into the garden and I saw my Mom looking at us apprehensively. I felt a pang of pain at the thought that I might be leaving her, and my siblings, but also excitement about what lay waiting for me. The man opened the car door and placed my box on the back seat. The girls climbed in next to it and spent the entire journey home looking through the wire window and making strange noises, pulling funny faces.

When we finally stopped and the car doors were opened, there was a scent in the air which I didn’t know – salty maybe, sharpish, exciting. It was also windier than I was used to. I was taken from my box and held by the man. One of the girls rang the front door bell. A lady answered it. The man thrust me at her surprised but delighted face, said “Happy Anniversary, Dear” and kissed her. And so I got my introduction and first smells of my people – himself, herself and the two princesses.

I liked them all, in different ways. I soon learned that herself was responsible for food, so did my best to keep on her good side at all times. I sang my finest songs for her, kissed her full on the mouth as often as she requested it, jumped up onto the bed or sofa next to her and schmoozed her unashamedly, muzzled her when  I thought she needed to stroke me … I really paid her a lot of attention, and I think it paid off. When occasionally she did get cross with me – barking too much, leaving calling cards on the lounge carpet, chewing up clothes pegs and other sundry and harmless amusements – I made sure I looked as woebegone and repentant as was caninely possible, and she very quickly relented.

Himself, I regard more as a sparring partner, although to be sure, he is the Boss. He likes to play rough with me, and although I am bred to be a Champion Herder and Seriously Tough Dog, I am actually quite a softie at heart and I am not that keen on horsing around. So I humour him, growl obligingly when he pulls on my bone, jump back and forward like a demented goat when he wants to play-fight, fetch the ball for him when he throws it – once or twice at any rate, until I get tired.

The princesses are delightful. The only thing they don’t like is when I bark and they are either watching TV, speaking to their friends on the phone or trying to study. Then they shout at me “Luca, shut up!”. But mostly they are really happy to cuddle me, pat me, scratch my back and so on. Diligent staff are difficult to find these days.

When I first got to my home, there were a number of other animals already in residence. One was an large, ancient, black Labrador cross called Nougi. He was seriously old, rather smelly, and not very bright. He had a very good nature though, and didn’t get cross with my puppy play, even when I sank my razor-sharp teeth into his tail. Well, I couldn’t resist – you see I don’t have a tail – the breeder had it removed when I was very young – and I found Uncle Nougi’s long black one fascinating. It didn’t taste too good, mind you. He sang a very loud and rather discordant song every time I did it!

The other was a whitish, rather small (though still larger than me, at that time) terrier / Pomeranian cross type who had no teeth and a really bad attitude. She was also extremely old and seriously crotchety. I think she was also pretty much blind and deaf by then. She spent most of her time lying on a small mattress in the passage scratching – she had bad skin problems, which seemed mainly to affect her lower back and backside, neither of which was a pretty sight! Every time I walked past her blanket she would snap at me. I didn’t worry because she had no teeth anyway and couldn’t see where she was snapping – half the time she gummed the blanket! Her name was Great-Aunt Cassie. Whereas Uncle Nougi tolerated me, Great Aunt Cassie did not – she would quite happily have sent me back to Aunty Jane the breeder.

Then there was Danny the African Grey Parrot. He spent most of his time in his cage, thankfully, but every night, herself would take him out and let him sit on her shoulder while the family watched TV. When he was with her he did not like anyone else coming near – clearly he felt very possessive about his owner. Whenever I tried to muscle in and get a cuddle, he would tilt his head sideways – that is how he focused – and I could see him sizing up my ears, which by the way are large and tend to stick up. He put the fear of God into me, that parrot.

There were cockatiels – a succession of them, actually – but they didn’t come out much, kept to themselves, and generally just made a lot of noise and mess, which didn’t bother me.

We had many visitors to the house. So many that it got confusing. One regular visitor was a lady with a very dark skin, compared to my people, whose job it appeared to be to clean the house and iron the washing. She came twice a week in the afternoon. When she arrived she would shoo all of us animals out into the back yard and then get busy with her work. She never spoke unkindly to us, and even knew our names, but we were left in no doubt as to what was required – “out!” As soon as she departed, of course, we would get back inside and it didn’t take too long before it again smelt and looked like “our house”.

When I was about 8 weeks old, soon after I had taken up residence in “our house” with “my people”, himself became quite concerned about my ears. I don’t know why – they weren’t bothering me. But the problem was evidently that one was “up” and the other wasn’t – and for a pedigree Corgie this was just “not on”. He consulted the breeder and I heard him telling herself that the breeder had advised strapping foam plastic splints into the ears to keep them “up”. I sounded thoroughly disagreeable, and I determined to get them up on my own. Try and I might, I simply could not get the recalcitrant ear to stand up. Just when I assumed all was lost, and that I was doomed to having plastic foam in my ear, it popped up on its own, and thereby removed the need for any splints. Phew!

Being of high birth and all that, it was evidently expected of me that I would follow in grandfather Louis’ venerable footsteps and make my mark in the show arena’s of the country, if not the world.  The first of these occasions was at Pinelands and I was still little and in the “puppy class”. Himself and herself are not, I must add, dog show types, having never owned pedigreed canines before me. Aunty Jane, the breeder was there, and she gave them some tips – “just walk him around the ring”, “if he is being difficult, tempt him with one of these treats – just keep them in your pocket, and give him one afterwards”, and so on. All very well. I saw herself put the treats in her pocket. I could smell them. She put the choke chain around my neck, attached the lead and we were off. She was sweetly saying something about “This way boy, come on now, good boy”, but I was not hearing her – those treats were calling me. I could hear them – “Luca, come and get us!” I made a lunge towards herself’s pocket, just about strangling myself in the process. Too high – no luck. The  another – ditto. Undeterred I carried on – I was going to get those treats or die trying. The result was a spectacle later described by himself as reminiscent of a yoyo or a dingbat – a little ball of fluff bouncing up and down on the end of a lead, while herself pleaded, coaxed, threatened and beseeched me to please walk nicely – all to no avail. I came second – out of two! They tried me in one more show, with similar results and then gave up. We are all happier for the decision.

I had a fairly uneventful and untraumatic puppyhood with one or two exceptions. The one involved being attacked and the other was more embarrassing.

My people used often to take me for walks to a local park. There were usually other dogs there but we didn’t bother much with them and vice versa. It was large enough for us to do our own thing, check out some molehills for moles (never did quite manage to get one), pick up and deliver the “mail”, chase the odd hadeda ibis or Egyptian goose and bark at a seagull or two. It was on one of these occasions when I was viciously attacked by a large white Alsatian type hound – he simply rushed up and grabbed me by the neck. He was about twice my size and very nearly killed me. To this day I don’t know what his problem was – some ancient altercation between the Germans and the Welsh? Or had he had a bad night of indigestion after eating a rotten bone? Herself did her valiant best to fight him off, but he was stupid as well as vicious and didn’t let go easily. To cut a long story short, I needed a lot of painful stitches and a drain to be inserted at the vet – not my favourite place as it is – I generally manage to terrify the assistant into having to muzzle me. Herself went with me for the first few rounds and then himself to get the stitches and drain taken out. I am not sure which was worse. I made it quite plain that I didn’t enjoy either.

The other incident involved a sock. One of the princess’s socks, as I recall. I think I found it in the laundry basket. I forget why exactly I decided to chew it, but I did. Maybe the taste of the washing powder or fabric softener was attractive. At any rate, I gave it a good chew and then accidentally swallowed it. What happened was that herself saw me chewing it, shouted at me, I got a fright and – gloops – there it went. Well that set the cat among the pigeons! She was on the phone to the vet within minutes and the advice was pretty alarming. “Give him salt water to make him vomit. It may come out the other end. If it doesn’t he may need an operation.” Needless to say, I did not take kindly to being force fed salt water. In fact it is one of the few times in my life that I have had to bite herself. The other time was when she insisted on putting that tick and flea stuff on my neck – I ask you! She got the message and desisted. So began the long wait. Every time I went to the garden or to the park, my rear end was under intense surveillance. A day went by. Two days. Three days. Eventually it came out – on the lounge floor. I didn’t feel any different but my people looked much relieved.

In 2005 first Uncle Nougi and then Great Aunt Cassie shuffled off peacefully. They were very old and at the end became ill and were, I think quite content to go. I missed Nougi, and even missed the toothless old bat snapping at me. The house seemed very quiet, even with the parrot’s whistles and hootings. Not for long. I should have enjoyed it while I could. On Christmas Day 2005 Aunt Jane welcomed a new litter of Corgies. This time the mother was my sister. All the pups received names starting with “L” since it was the next litter after mine. One of the pups was named Ladybird, and my people decided that I needed a companion and that Ladybird would be that companion.  Except they renamed her Emma. Emma made her grand entry in February 2006 when I was just over 2 and a half years old. She was very small and reminded me of one of herself’s furlined slippers which I had often been tempted to chew (but never had). Technically she was my niece. I adored her and would do just about anything for her – with a few exceptions, you understand – one must have one’s standards.  Despite her being somewhat smaller than I am, it has always been clear who is in charge. I am afraid that she just needs to curl her little lip at me, and bristle her whiskers, and I immediately acquiesce. It can be something a simple as a request to clean her eyes with a good licking. It can be as major as “move over, I want your food”. When madame speaks, I listen and obey!

Danny the parrot finally succeeded in his nefarious designs and managed to get his beak into my right ear. I cannot describe the pain – the thought of it still haunts me and I was definitely psychologically scarred for life. I made enough noise to bring the fire brigade and to make it worse, my people seemed to find it vaguely amusing. Really!

When I was 4, my people simply disappeared one day. They packed some large suitcases, got in their cars and disappeared. They had done this before and generally reappeared in a week or two, but this time they didn’t. A kindly middle-aged doctor and his wife came to stay in the house and looked after Emma and me. We liked them a lot. They took us for lots of walks, and fed us well. But we did wonder what had happened to our people. And then six months later, just after Christmas, they reappeared like nothing had happened. They smelled a bit funny, and the princesses had grown a little. We didn’t hold it against them. Life went on.

At some stage himself got himself a little torch thingy – it shined out a bright red dot. I think he used it as a pointer for his lectures. Anyway, it looked exactly like a little red insect running around the floor and up the walls and even though I KNEW it wasn’t, well it was fun to chase it anyway. I can chase it for hours, but unfortunately he loses interest after a few minutes.

Now I am 9, which I am told is 63 in human years. That is old enough to retire, and retire I do. Every night at nine pm I retire up the stairs my bedroom (which I allow himself and herself to share with me). I give herself a glance or two to find out whether she is coming to bed, but if not, I don’t wait. An old dog needs his bed and mine is upstairs. I still enjoy the good things in life – food, walks, food, cats, food, pigeons, food, Emma, food … and of course sleeping. I am happy to sleep just about any time of the day, but I particularly like a late lie-in on the weekends, when I can jump on their bed and snuggle up for a cuddle. If they stop stroking me I am very good at giving them a nudge to remind them that they are there for a purpose. Life is good. Even the parrot has calmed down a little. He will be around long after I have shuffled off. I hope my successors have the sense to have smaller ears.