The General

We have a new ‘doggy friend’. My husband calls him ‘The General’.

The General looks quite old, but may not be. He is smallish in stature, with stumpy little legs, but corpulent in build and quite muscular. He is mainly white (if you count dirty white as white …), with a couple of darker patches. We haven’t taken a picture of him yet, but he looks a little like this (even if the colour is wrong… ):

The General, like many village dogs here, is covered in dust, mites, and the odd tick or two, but he doesn’t appear to mind too much. He seems quite content to divide his day between sitting in the street outside (what we believe to be) his owner’s house, making cars go around him as best they can, and making excursions up the street to the local bar, where he moves from drinker to drinker, and sits hopefully waiting for someone to feed him odd pieces of tapas, after which he will take a drink from the bucket that catches the overflow water from the air con unit. He seems quite content with his life.

The General appears to be the ‘dog in charge’. He will tolerate the presence of other dogs, as long as they keep away from his ‘tapas pitches’. Any usurper will be met with a rumbling growl, followed by a quick, but waddling, snapping charge. All but the most stupid learn quickly from this!

The General hardly acknowledges our hounds, prefering to observe their exhuberence with the contemp he feels it deserves. Our male hound, not the brightest of beasts and usually a little aggressive with male ’strangers’, is totally confused by The General’s lack of interest in ‘territorial tactics’ and these days prefers to keep his distance. I think he has got the unspoken message!

Most of the villagers treat dogs with detachment. Many have them as pets. They feed them, give them a drink, and then let them out onto the terrace or the street for the day. Dogs are dogs; okay for occasional company and perhaps for hunting, but they are not to be allowed to think they are anything special. Dogs should know their place.

So you can imagine the reaction we received when we first took our two hounds to the village, complete with matching winter coats (it was bitter cold then) and looking (reasonably) well-groomed. The dogs caused quite a stir, not least because one of them is a Saluki, a breed hardly ever encountered in Spain. The villagers’ assessment of us as eccentrics was probably enhanced when my husband took in our little stray on a stormy night, fed her, got her clean and de-loused, kept her …… and then took her out on a lead! We now know that the lead is completely unnecessary; she knows she’s on to a good thing with us and always comes back in after her frequent excursions around the village.

Either way, the villagers, with their different approach to animals, obviously think we are nuts!

But back to The General. It began one evening at the bar when we had a very large plate of tapas to share. The General waddled over and sat down, keeping a wary distance as we were strangers then. He looked far from starving, but he may have been hungry … and the tapas were much to much for us …. so we threw a few scraps to The General. It wasn’t long before he was at our feet, waiting expectantly for the next piece. Then my husband carefully lowered his hand near The General’s head. Warily, The General deigned to let my husband stroke him. Then he came over to me. Now I am a bit of a ‘hygiene freak’, so petting a sticky-coated, mite-embedded mut hadn’t been high on the list of my priorities …… but there was something appealing about The General …… I gently patted his head. He shuffled closer, giving me his ’soulful-eyed’ look …… and made me his friend for life.

When we left the bar, The General followed us, waddling along at a discrete distance. We told him “No! Go back!” but he of course wasn’t having any of that (especially as he doesn’t understand English ….). So we walked quickly to our house and tried to get in and close the door before The General arrived. But we had not allowed for the rapturous welcome we received from our three hounds. They burst through the front door, leaping and licking and dashing around as only stupid (and previously bored) dogs do. The General kept his distance. Our dogs did too. He sat and watched them for a short time and then rose and waddled back towards the bar.

We thought The General had got the message. Of course we were mistaken as to what the message was.

From our point of view, a house teeming with mad hounds (including a male who would get aggressive if another male tried to take ‘his place’) would not seem that attractive to a free agent like The General, who already appeares to have his life set out pretty much the way he wanted it. But The General was looking at things rather differently.

After all, if you are an ‘observer of life’, as The General is, and you see a house where a stray has already been taken in and the owners obviously treat her well and they are dog lovers too …… and you fancy a change of scene …… surely you can take advantage of the benefits offered by these humans’ good (and gullible) nature and still retain your freedom?

These days The General has taken to sitting outside our front door. He doesn’t particularly want to come in, but he does welcome a bowl of fresh water or two. He lays there at the bottom of our steps, quite content and knowing he has found another ‘rightful place’ to be. When we take our three dogs out for a walk, he moves a little, just enough to let them charge through. At that point he may wander off to the bar or go and sit in his old place outside the house around the corner. We now suspect that this may not have been his home at all …. but he does go somewhere at night, so we are not sure ……

Either way, The General must not be allowed in! We already have three hounds (two of them large) living with us in a not very large house. Enough is enough! The General, however lovely he is (and, despite the fact that he is dirty and mite-infested, I do like him) must not be allowed to take advantage of our animal-loving nature.

We may be ’stupid Brits’ when it comes to animals, but even stupid Brits must learn restraint …… somehow….!