You old dog, you…

You may or may not have noticed the story about ‘The Dogfather’ doing the rounds at the end of last week. What it was, was a shaggy dog story (literally, not figuratively) about a Golden Retriever who had fathered over 300 puppies.

“Wow, Waffie, wait til you hear this,” I said but then stopped myself.

Initially, I was going to read the story out to the Waff but then I caught myself on at the precipice of the telling; I know I like to wind aul Waff up but I didn’t want to rub his nose in the fact that he can’t have kids and thus make him feel sad. Snip-snip!

I can relate the tale now though, dear reader, seeing as how Waffle doesn’t read the paper. He’s too tight to part with the coinage.

The story centred on Banbury Guide Dogs’ star performer Trigger, dubbed the Dogfather, who was retiring from the charity’s breeding programme after siring a grand total of 323 puppies.

“Genghis Khan wouldn’t be in it,” I said aloud.

* Trigger (a moniker I considered more apt than his eventual nickname), is nine-years-old and following his retirement, will likely live out his remaining years in abject boredom – much like our own eunuch does.

Banbury Guide Dogs said Trigger’s progeny had brought ‘independence’ and ‘confidence’ to the lives of blind and partially sighted people all over the country – unlike our own home’s hairy resident.

The decision to alter Waffle’s reproductive capabilities came about quite by accident. At first, I wouldn’t entertain the thought of neutering poor wee Waff. The very mention of it sent a shiver up my spine and I wondered how anyone could ever be so cruel.

“No, no, no,” I said to anyone listening. “Waffle will continue his life as nature intended, fully-formed and unmolested by the veterinary surgeon’s knife. He will not become the butt of all his friends’ jokes when they realise there are two bits missing.”

Then I read an article about how neutering can alter a dog’s behaviour for the better, namely that it reduces roaming and eradicates excitable behaviour.

“Right, Waffie, into the car,” I told him. “Sure, you don’t really need them anyway.”

The fact of the matter was, Waffle liked to disappear from time-to-time, most likely, I suspected, to visit some hussy from down the road, and I would have tried anything to prevent this happening. God only knew, the next hanlin I’d have on my hands would be the hussy’s aul boy banging on my door looking to string waffle up by the… well, as it turned out, he’d soon have the perfect alibi.

However, after reading about Trigger, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve done the right thing. Honestly, I never knew dogs could be so… prolific.

“I could have been a millionaire,” I told a friend.

“Erm…” replied the friend. “I thought you said Waffle regularly sounded like a whingy wean with a slapped rear end, whining around the clock and following you everywhere you went.”

“He’s cute though,” I replied a little faux-indignantly. “And anyway, maybe some people like whingy dogs – plenty of people have whingy weans.”

“Keep digging that hole, pal.”

“What hole?”

“That hole you’d be fired into if you ever started a puppy farm.”

“It wouldn’t have been a puppy farm. It would have been a haven for dogs…”

“And their reproductive tendencies – that’s a puppy farm.”

“I’ll bet Genghis Khan didn’t worry about puppy farms.”

“What the Fonz does Genghis Khan have to do with anything?”

The truth is, jokes aside, one Waffle is about as much as any person could ever handle. Imagine if he’d had a gang of weans and they were all as whingy as he is and they followed me round the house like a choir of harpies yodelling to high heaven… I’d be mentioning Genghis Khan for an entirely different reason.

Snip-snip!

* While records from the 1200s are difficult to quantify, it remains very likely that Genghis Khan has fathered the most children in history. Estimates suggest that between 1,000 and 3,000 direct offspring came from Khan’s enormous harem. A 2003 study estimated that 16 million men alive today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan.