Brace yourself…

I was standing in a queue in a shop last week and I spotted something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

At the time, just to make things extra incongruous, I was buying a couple of bottles of water for Waffle; he isn’t keen on tap water; maybe it’s the fluoride he can smell. Anyway…

In the queue I noticed that the man in front of me was buying a case of beer; he was struggling to hold the 24 bottles to his chest and I thought to myself: Good man. You’re obviously enjoying your thirst rather than suffering from it.

As the queue wasn’t moving, the man eventually took the executive decision to set the box down and it was only then that I noticed what I was noticing. The man, who was in his 60s (if he was a day), was wearing a pair of braces. I thought to myself: Good man. You’re not afraid to make a fashion statement.

I then wondered to myself: Should I start wearing braces? Would my friends start calling me Grandpa Walton if I turned up to the pub in braces? Would I care?

In the shop, I was myself wearing a belt which, given my current girth, is somewhat between holes. The upshot of this is that I have to wear the belt slightly looser than I would like (otherwise I’m cutting the back end off meself). And the upshot of that is that my jeans are always on the downward trajectory – which is fine when you’re in a toilet or about to climb into bed but not great when you’re queuing in a shop with your arms full of stupid bottled water for the stupid dog.

Then I noticed something else. The man was also wearing a belt.

Even now, I remember doing a double take and checking to see if my eyes weren’t deceiving me. They weren’t. The man was wearing braces and a belt. I thought: Good man. You’re taking no chances. Then I reconsidered: This was one of the worst cases of pessimism I’d ever seen.

Then I remembered that scene in the 1968 western, ‘Once Upon a Time in the West.’ Frank (played by Henry Fonda) was addressing a man named Wobbles. Frank said, “Wobbles, how can you trust a man that wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can’t even trust his own pants.”

You may be wondering how any of this relates to a dog named Waffle. To be honest, I was kinda wondering the same thing myself.

The reality is, when dealing with Waffle you can never be too sure nor too prepared – much like the man in the belt and the braces. Put it like this, if Waffle wore trousers, he’d need a belt, braces and a nappy with big, rusty safety pins. It’s not that I’m afraid of the hound toileting in the wrong place (although one can never be too sure) but rather it’s more a case of distrust.

My main issue with the Waff at the moment is that he has to be told twice in every respect. If, for example, he starts peeing onto the door of the hen house, I have to tell him twice to stop. If I inadvertently drop some hen grain onto the path of a morning and he moves to intercept, mere words won’t prevent him from following through and only a scissor-kick feint will stop him in his tracks. Or, if he goes off his head barking at the postman when he or she arrives, I can’t merely say, “Gone stop barking wee waffie.” I could say this but then I’d immediately have to follow it up with a roared threat of extreme violence.

Compared to jeans on a perpetual downward trajectory and the double whammy solution of braces and a belt, I’m not sure there even exists a double whammy solution for Waffle. He is simply too disobedient, too scatter-brained and too… annoying.

To give you an idea of how annoying Waffle can be with his constant monkey business, imagine this: You are wearing slippy trousers and you decide to err on the side of caution and start wearing braces and a belt. Imagine then, after taking that double precaution your trousers still land at your ankles.

I am that man.