My dog is a bacteria-ridden festerland.
And I use that word advisedly. The little microorganisms, that are so very creative in their unseen world, love him. They see him as a kind of fairground attraction, a theme park, if you will.
I can almost hear them: Look, chaps, there’s a multicellular organism that would show us off to our very best advantage. Time for a party.Hop on!
And he does showcase them very well. Talented single souls, these bacteria, with some unsettling entries on their CV. Besides being lethal, smells come way up there on their skills set.
Yesterday morning my friend Chris, part of Macaulay’s harem, jumped into our car. The agenda: walk followed by Starbucks. Heaven.
But the dog was there too, and he has never quite got over the greet-by-hurtle habit of his puppy days.
Chris sat down, and Macaulay shot up on her knee.
And treated his beloved to some of the choicest odours a forest can bring to the table.
My friend summarised the dog’s aura: it was the worst he had ever been. He was rank. He was banished with all speed to the back of the car, where he sat forlornly on one of the kids’ seats, plotting to return like a cabinet-in-exile.
I suspect a new habit of his has a lot to do with this worsening of affairs. Because, five years into his scruffy little life, Macaulay has discovered water.
In the spring we changed our forest route to include the pond, which holds its own next to a reservoir.
Very soon after its discovery, Macaulay was paddling. And before long he was wandering around, pawing the pond bed obsessively.
We couldn’t work out what he was doing. Phil favoured the terrier following its ancestors, digging up primaeval slime theory, while I had a nasty suspicion there was a dead body under there and it was only a matter of time before the mutt’s persistent paws freed it and it floated to the surface.
But a season later, we have concluded he just loves to paw the ripples. He is a simple soul, and it takes very little to engross him. A stray squirrel, a fellow dog barking, a pattern on the water.
Two weeks ago, we turned back from the pond towards home without checking if our family’s fifth, four legged member was with us.
About five minutes into the mission someone said, hold on, where’s Macaulay?
And of course we knew, straight away.
I packed the rest of them off home and set off, hell-for-leather, deep breathing and long-striding.
No sign of the moustachio’d crusader.
But there were two dog walkers and their happy-go-lucky hounds, also cavorting by the water. Excuse me, I said, have you seen a little dog with a moustache?
They said nothing, but pointed to the darkest, smelliest, least accessible part of the pond, where it turns into a bog.
Thank you, I said.
I will not divulge the vocabulary I chose as I sought out and retrieved my dog. He did not want to come, and even when he did, he ran back to the scene of his crime the first chance he got, to revisit those siren ripples.
While our hope was that the water would make our hound cleaner, I fear it has done just the opposite. Those forest ponds, they’re rotting shops, habitats for the slimy and odorous. Nature uses water for its own ends, and sometimes that end must be decomposition.
Arriving home later with a filthy hound, I turned to the tap and poured myself a long glass of cool, clear water. So often we dress it up with fruit juice, or squash, but you can’t beat the real thing after a madcap chase across the forest.
Felix and I have been having words about water. We ran out of squash and juice at the beginning of the week, but that was fine, I reasoned. We have water.
Oh, the fuss and bother, the debate and dejection, and all because Felix did not want water. Milk, maybe: water, no.
Methinks it is time to throw out all alternatives for a time.
Because what we undervalue about water, is a lot. Remember all the times we were ill, and it soothed a throat, or hydrated us and took away a headache? Or travelling in a hot country, those big blue plastic bottles which glistened and tasted even better under the sun?
This is the champagne of the earth, it’s the best there is, this stuff we drink here in the west.
Because not only is it clean: it tastes good.
On Wednesday, I sat at the side of my school’s hall, watching my favourite person giving an assembly. She is called Karen, and I have had more than one eureka moment, sitting there listening to her, alongside 250 children.
She generally talks about her journeys to Africa, specifically Zambia. She undertakes these with a group called Mission Direct, based in Luton.
She once felled me with a modern day feeding-of-the-five-thousand story: she sat and watched a school kitchen one day on her travels. With meagre ingredients, the cooks fed hundreds upon hundreds of children: when the vats of simple food they started out with simply could not have stretched that far.
Those in the Lusaka suburbs have strong stomachs. they have become immune to so much. But the lengths they have to go to, to stay healthy, are extreme.
Their street, Karen says, will generally have a nearby borehole. Some are fair, some are teeming with the worst of microorganisms.
While Karen was out there, she visited a mobile clinic. They had a solution for anyone who made it there. But it wasn’t pretty.
They simply give out bottles of chlorine.
You take your cloudy, possibly lethal borehole water. You render it safe by pouring in a goodly dose of chlorine. And then you drink it.
In a minute, I’m going downstairs, and I’m going to pour myself a pint of the clearest water the Thames Water Authority can provide for me. I’m going to appreciate every last drop, in honour of the friends I do not know, out there in Lusaka.
And then I’m off to find a more concrete way to make it possible for them to do the same.
Cheers.
Kate Shrewsday 
Karen is telling the truth about Lusaka…
Sobering, isn’t it?
Oh, the things we take for granted. In my part of the world, here on the high desert of New Mexico, water is a precious commodity. However, the water we have is clean and palatable and deliciously refreshing. We have only to turn on the tap and there it is. The biggest inconvenience is a restricted schedule for watering lawns, but there has never been a time when personal use in the home has been in question. That’s not to say that day won’t come. However, I have an acquaintance living in Africa where people have water only if they can afford to pay for the water truck–and not all people can. Disease is rampant because desperately thirsty people will use water from whatever source they find, albeit gutters or worse. Chlorine might help if it could be obtained there. Unimaginable for me, for most of us. It’s a problem of immense proportions.
As for your canine stinker, I empathize. I have one sitting next to me as I write. Our Cairn terrier MacDuff is currently sporting a musty essence–and being affectionately referred to as scruffy Duffy. He just has that type of coat–thick and a bit oily that seems to breed unpleasant odors. A veterinarian association in the States came out this week with a recommendation that house dogs be bathed once a week. Sigh…not as easy as it sounds, for MacDuff or his people.
LOL, sadly it is the very chlorine in the water which makes it impossible to have that weekly bathe. It aggravates his skin and he scratches as if he has a million visitors slightly larger than the aforementioned bacteria….
Susan, thanks for your lovely reply. When we have it its so easy to draw a blind over those who don’t. I wrote about this as part of the Bloggers Action Day: there are plenty more on this theme where mine came from.
Great post, Kate. Our hearts go out to those in Lusaka (where my father grew up) and elsewhere.
Your pic is just gorgeous and I love your expression “champagne of the earth”. With this vivid reminder of pond lurkers, I think I’ll try to keep our puppies to the pool 🙂
If you value the aura of your house, Naomi, and that beautiful studio: that is exactly what I would do. We want to keep them as beautiful as they were in your post the other day!
I knew when I wrote that some of the people reading this may have had connections with Lusaka. And both you and Cindy have…blogging really is a global business, isn’t it?
I realise just how lucky l am having Taz, he hates water!! The down side he hates having a bath…….
Water is one less problem to think about though. LOVED that picture of Taz watching telly the other day…..studious dog…..
oh my goodness, synchronicities across the big pond.
I, too, wrote about water yesterday, among other modern “advances” that have left us humans reeling…I didn’t know about blog action day, and would appreciate a link to it when you have a chance –
Alarming contrasts between our photos of water! It really is time for all of us to begin caring for this precious, mysterious, indispensable element. Champagne, liquid gold, elixir of life…
My dogs are smelling ok, but we’re experiencing the scourge of fleas for the first time in their lives ( 10 years and 8 years ). The moist, fecund, temperate northwest is having a huge flea infestation and my fourlegged friends are miserable.
Barbara, I’m just off to read your water post. I’m looking forward to the picture….Blog Action Day is at http://blog.blogactionday.org/. Still plenty of time to link up. Yes, that’s British forest water you’re looking at. It’s comparatively unspoilt, but is brown and murky and unappetising for all except the deer who use it every day. The dog loves it. Sorry to hear your dogs are suffering, sounds like conditions are just right for fleas- hope they pack their tiny suitcases and leave soon…
Reading this I am reminded that there are many places in the world that can not count on fresh water – Uganda two years ago reminded me of that.
Terrible, isn’t it that we are so cushioned in our world that we need reminding?
Certainly is, Pseu. So many who don’t have what we have, and here we sit.
I almost didn’t need to read the blog Kate. The pictures said nearly all of it anyway!!
And yes, the champagne of the earth, and it is so unsung, and so precious.
Love Dad
Cheers Dad. Macaulay at his most pungent.
When my daughter was on holidays I looked after her Shi Itzu. On one of our daily walks, being a creature who needs variety -me not the dog – I decided to take a different route. And she found a gooey mud puddle. Straight in she went while I screeched at her to, ‘Stop that this instant and get back here!’
The little monster ignored me, as dogs are wont to do, and rolled, and squirmed, and rolled some more. I could swear she had a smile on her now grubby, muddy face, which, right then, lost all cuteness for me.
I live in an apartment. She did not wish to climb the stairs. I tied her to a tree in the garden, ran upstairs, filled a bucket with water – of the soapy variety – ran back downstairs and poured the lot over her. That got her moving.
Up those stairs she flew, and straight into the bathroom and into the bath, where she sat – shamefaced, or was it sulking? – as I removed the mud while I berated her. Of course when she was clean and dry, we were friends again, and she snoozed with her head on my lap while I giggled at picture of how much she had enjoyed rollick in that mud.
LOL I think it was sulking,Liz, shame is just an attitude they strike to get sympathy:-D What a wonderful story and a fabulous fate for a shi itzu….
Your fog reminds me of Hairy Maclary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_Maclary
Ah, we know Hairy Maclary of Donaldson’s Dairy! Felix knows a few of his books by heart! And yes, Macaulay is the spitting image:-)
“the champagne of the earth” I will remember that each time I take a long, hard pull on a glass of water and, believe me, I will think about how lucky I am to have it flowing from my tap and vow to do something to help those who have nary a drop of clean drinking water, let alone water to cook and bathe with.
I admire the way you write, Kate; how you weave a lesson or question or, dare I say moral, into your story. Well done.
Thanks lifeonthecutoff:-) Funny that you chose the last few days to write about Walden Pond. It is such a beautiful piece, full of the wistfulness of Autumn, and the photographs are so evocative.
Stunning photos, what a different perspective, well done!
Our dogs also loves swimming 😉
Stunning model, Tokeloshi:-) I’ll keep an eye on your site in case any of your dogs appear in pictures…
i’ve read this post twice and still come back for more Macaulay.
The dog is a biohazard.
Ooh, another wet romp with that biohazard of a canine. 😀
Cheers to the champagne of the earth.
BTW: “Festerland” as a moniker for an amusement park might not have the same draw and appeal as Disneyland.
….unless you are a terrier 😀