A year in the life

Honestly, I never thought this would last any longer than six weeks; I merely considered The Wuff with the Smooth a temporary experiment whereby I might have some craic recalling Waffle’s antics and adventures. But then, I didn’t reckon on His Hairyness being the biggest canine fool ever to have graced God’s green earth.

From dirty protests in the back hall to eating slug pellets and then boking up a bolus of black disaster on the kitchen floor; from helpfully herding cattle and deer out of the garden to the Lucozade-coloured streams onto my bare feet, when he’s been excited to see me; from run-ins with foxes, to high speed chases with hares; from chasing cats into hiding under the bonnet of my car to that time he tried to comfort me when I fell in the garden – all of these tales have created something of a diary for me to dip into from time to time, when I need a laugh or indeed, when I need to remember why I require blood pressure medication.

One of the little humans recently suggested that I cut out all these columns and stick them in a scrap book so that we can laugh about the Waff’s antics in later years. But then I remembered that, if I went to all that bother with scrap books and scissors and pritt-sticks, the hound would most likely chew the thing into smithereens at his earliest opportunity – which would certainly be ironic.

However, apart from recounting his weekly adventures when he’s knocking kids down or sniffing the postman’s butt or whining to high heaven, I have also discovered that having Waffle and more importantly, having to think about Waffle and all his various idiosyncrasies, has made me more reflective of myself, my home and my own place in the world. Trying to understand, make room for and empathise with a creature whose primary goal in life is to love and be loved, is something of a humbling undertaking. Yes, there have been times – well-documented times – when I have visualised throttling him and then setting off with my spade to dig a hole but more and more often, there are times when I am wont to look past the Lucozade-coloured streams and shiny turds caught underfoot and see the dog named Waffle who, in his heart, only wants to please. He is genuinely happy to see me in the evenings, his big, brown, clownish eyes brimming with love and he is genuine with his affections, his big, pink slabbering tongue usually doing its best to steal a kiss, if I deign to stoop to close.

Over the course of these writings and even before (Waffle turns two on New Year’s Day), I have swore and I have better swore wherever and whenever His Hairyness has acted outside of house etiquette and most pertinently, when he has mindlessly destroyed an item or items belonging to someone else (ie me). But also, over the course of the past two years, I have laughed and I have better laughed when the bumbling buffoon partakes in his own unique form of slapstick humour like tripping over his own ears or diffing around the corner of the hall and then crashing into a vase.

Rummaging through previous instalments I think I summed it up half well at the beginning of the summer in column number 23…

“My lesson, the one I have learned through running out of patience, losing my temper and, on occasion, brandishing the swingball bat with murder in my eyes, is that I must return the love without needing to twist him to fit my own image or cultivate my own morals. I have to let Waffle be perfectly himself and then – only then – can our relationship be complete. By ‘complete’ I mean that I will no longer want to do any strangulation.”

Whilst there is no real moral to this week’s instalment (he’s still a plonker but he’s my plonker), I suppose I just wanted to clarify that there may yet be future adventures and antics to recall as we head into the Year of Our Lord, 2023.

So long as I don’t throttle him, that is.