Melissa Kite
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Long John stopped whistling and started running. Oh dear. If he was worried I was worried. He slipped over in the mud as he chased her along the ditch. He chased her into the wood, through the wood and round the wood several times. When I caught up, all I could see was the flash of a little black dog, mouth open as if laughing, dashing backwards and forwards between the trees, flushing game birds everywhere.
Then, amid a great squawking of pheasants, she sprang into another ditch and out into the main road leading to the A3.
At which point Long John leapt over the ditch, ran into the road and stopped both lanes of traffic.
The cars thankfully halted as Cydney ran up and down the road laughing all the while. Every time I got near her, she veered away.
Finally, Long John, who was standing all six foot six of him in the road with his arms up to keep the traffic back, like an enormous dog lollypop man, shouted, ‘You’re going to have to dive for her!’ ‘What?’ I shouted back. ‘Dive! Next time she comes near you. Now! Dive!’
She was a good ten feet away when I launched myself into the air. I came down on top of her, lying face flat into the road, my bottom in the air, the dog beneath me.
‘Aaaaaagh!’ I groaned in agony and triumph.
Long John took her by the scruff and put her lead on. ‘I need a whisky,’ he gasped.
For her second session, therefore, we went into a fenced-off pen where he practised sending her backwards and forwards and showing her live rabbits and then calling her off.
After 20 minutes, he announced, ‘She’s a strange one, isn’t she?’
‘How do you mean, strange?’
‘Well, if she was a woman, I would almost say she was a bit…kinky.’
‘Kinky?’
‘She likes you being all lovey-dovey with her, but when you get cross she quite likes that too.’
He’s right. I do have a kinky spaniel. The other night I was relaxing on the sofa with her lying quietly at my feet when suddenly I heard a crunching sound.
‘What on earth have you found to chew down there?’ I said, reaching into her mouth to investigate. What came out was a huge chunk of glass.
The last time she did this — crunched a jamjar to bits, if you please — I took her to the vets where they scanned her at great expense and couldn’t find a trace of anything. But it was midnight so I rang the emergency number. ‘Is there a lot of blood?’ said the emergency vet. ‘None,’ I said, as I searched her mouth which was wide open anyway as she was laughing her head off at me.
‘Is she choking?’ ‘Not choking so much,’ I said. ‘More chuckling.’
‘How strange,’ he said. ‘Yes, she is.’
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