The Kerryman - 18 September 2013. The Smiling Dog! Now before I proceed, I just want to assure you all that I am a balanced, sane-thinking, in-touch-with-reality kind of girl. And though I may have lost the youthful penchant for default cynicism, I am around long enough not to be fooled too greatly by anyone. With that piece of information comfortably imparted, I feel I can progress with confidence to claim the incredible - our dog Riley actually smiles. Fact! I always knew there was something but it was the eyes that confused me. We are talking a Golden Retriever here with big brown pools the depth of which makes entry into her soul an inevitable consequence of meeting her. Take my walking companion for example – a dedicated cat lover herself, won over to the canine world on the back of Riley. Anyway, back to this smiling business. Our dog is a genuinely happy dog and always has been which may well explain my failure to recognise that which has been there all along. As a pup, she learned the rules fast. There was no call for raised voices, finger pointing or that politically incorrect tap on the nose. Thinking about it now, she really did buoy our transfer into the whole doggy world and I have a lot to be grateful to her for. Not only does she keep the smile on her own face, but she gifts the rest of us with one too. So for a long time – well three years – I accepted her smiley face as her genetic makeup. But I was wrong. I am a great lover of hill-walks and country lanes and it is an interest that Riley shares wholly with me. Honest to God, the positivity she displays at every proposal to indulge it, should be bottled, sold and poured over the elusive green shoots of this recession - it might just make the shagging things grow! Positivity notwithstanding, however, a disturbing habit emerged recently that is akin to a game of Russian roulette. When an oncoming car advances towards us, Riley pulls on the lead and sticks her snout into its path. Panicked and traumatised, I have dragged her back but not without the potential horror revealing itself in all its goriness to the contours of my mind. What to do? Well what I did do was get cross, verbal and the un-pc thing – I smacked her on the nose. All of a sudden her face transformed. The dog I had known was no more. In place of contentment was dejection. However, the punishment did fit the crime because on the advance of a subsequent car, she duly stayed by my side. Bursting to reconcile, I crouched down, rubbed her face like a genie lamp and willed for the old face to return. It did. Instantaneously. My walking buddy (of the human variety) who has not yet disposed of her youthful cynicism uncharacteristically announced “I swear to God that dog smiles”. There you go! Fact.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 09:47:06 +0000
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