Wuff with the Smooth: The sea air

“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

– Excerpt from ‘Desiderata’ by Max Ehrmann

Remember a few weeks ago I was latterly lamenting the fact that we didn’t take Waffle away on our holidays?

Well, as a mark of good faith, we collectively decided that we would, in preparation for next year perhaps, take the hound to the seaside for a day out.

You will undoubtedly remember too that part of the reason that we didn’t take the Hairy Fool away to Wexford is because he’s a whiney H. From the moment he rises in the morning until he turns in at night, he is as vocal a dog as I’ve ever known. With whistles and chirps and whinges and whines, he rarely lets up – unless he’s eating or I lose the head and threaten him with disembowelment. If he was a person – a friend or family member – and he went on as he does, you’ve have no compunctions about telling him, “Gone shut your mouth, will you?”

“We have to get him used to the car?” Herself noted, the evening before our run to Rossnowlagh.

“I’m not sure it works that way,” I replied. “A plonker is a plonker. We could drive to Cuba and he wouldn’t get used to the car. But, I suppose, we have to start somewhere and try something.”

The following day, by the time we hit Belleek, I was ready for the hills.

Waffle had started in the back seat and had later been consigned to the passenger footwell, seeing as how he wouldn’t shut his hairy trap.

“Will we try him in the boot?” I asked.

“You tried that before,” Anna reminded me. “It didn’t work. It only made him worse.”

Remember the way the vuvuzelas soundtracked the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?

Reaching up to 127 decibels at full volume, a vuvuzela is louder than a chainsaw, and prolonged exposure can easily cause hearing damage, according to the experts.

Reaching up to 60 decibels at full volume, Waffle’s whinging is more annoying than a chainsaw – or a stadium full of vuvuzelas – and prolonged exposure can easily cause mental health problems, according to the experts (me).

By the time we arrived at the beach, I was considering just firing him into the sea and driving home.

Not wanting to spoil things for the bouncing little humans though, I held back on complaints about how Waffle is undoubtedly a hopeless case. To that end and to prevent him from drowning in the surf, I sent everyone else into the sea whilst I stayed on a blanket and tried to read the paper. Waffle had other ideas, however. These mostly included whinging and chirping constantly seeing as how the other members of the pack had apparently abandoned him.

“Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit,” Max Ehrmann wrote in his magnum opus, ‘Desiderata’.

“You’re vexatious to my fuppen spirit!” I told Waffle, who whined by way of reply. Of course he did.

“Why can’t you just enjoy the beach without all the noise?” Another whine.

After the others had returned from the sea, we ate a picnic and tried to block out the whining.

After that, in a bid to acclimatise him to the beach, we all set off for a walk, the hound on his lead. Remarkably, this was the only time at Rossnowlagh when he wasn’t whinging. He splashed in the shallows and sniffed among seaweed and even had the good sense to step over a marooned jellyfish.

Back at the car after the walk, it was time for an ice-cream and then the drive home. Whether from the heat or an acute trepidation for the forthcoming journey, I was sweating as I started the car and pulled out onto the road.

I might even have held my breath, anticipating yet another barrage of vuvuzela-like ear-batterings. And yet… silence.

No sooner had Waffle been installed in the passenger footwell, he curled up and went to sleep – a sound slumber he would replicate for the rest of the evening.

“Maybe it was the sea air,” someone said quietly – for fear of rocking their hairy boat.

“Or maybe he just got fed up listening to himself,” I responded.

“Maybe that’s him sorted for the next time,” someone else said.

“The next time?”

“And the time after that. And the time after that.”

The final words go to Max Ehrmann – who must have been a sound man – although I’m pretty sure he wasn’t referring to a dog like Waffle when he wrote the following…

“Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.