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Miller H Caldwell, click here
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All about the dogs in my life 1947-today
Preface
This book is about all the dogs in my life. But dogs are not the only family pet I have cared for. There have been pet mice, a series of goldfish, budgerigars and cordon blues, zebra and waxbill finches. However in Ghana I found interesting the amazing abilities of two house pets. I had both an African Grey Parrot and a Lesser Spotted Green nose Guenan Monkey. Both had remarkable intellects and a significant relationship with myself and my wife.
The monkey came to us as an orphan found clinging to its dead mother, who had been shot for food. Instantly it took to Jocelyn and became part of our family. It never opened its mouth to receive a piece of fruit. Instead fruit was always handed to it and Jackie turned it over to inspect it before placing it in his mouth. He was inquisitive. I drove with him on my shoulder. I walked with Jackie down to the Tema harbour where we sometimes took a walk along the high wall. He accompanied me wherever I went. If it detected danger, it lept up into my arms. The bond was strong. At that time it was our one and only child.
But I had another pet. Kofi, an African Grey Parrot. I lived at the Kortu Gon compound in Tema. He had a strong metal cage kept usually in the front garden but if I was working at home or in the evenings, Kofi came into the house.
He loved to sit on my typewriter and travel up and down as the carriage set a new line. A bell sounded when the carriage was fully extended. Twice. Kofi never missed a trick. He began to speak in English and in Akan Twi as I was now speaking that language. He was hand trained and stood on one leg to crack open a kola nut. He sang Lilli Boleno, the BBC World Service theme on the hour each hour and he sang the Ghanaian National Anthem. He was a quick learner and a keen one two. He was in my mind long after we left him in the safe hands of a Ghanaian friend, Julliana Nii-Moi. So much so that I have written a novel featuring him, entitled The Parrot’s Tale.
When I returned to Scotland I retured to a family home of dogs and that has been my interest since those African days.
However in Jackie the monkey and Kofi the African Grey parrot, I was learning more about animal behaviour. I had absorbed their antics, insights and abilities. Now I can put that knowledge into the context of the many dogs I have known in my life. It has given me a greater understanding of the canine breeds and left me in wonder at their silent minds.
Miller now works with the Cinnamon Trust. The National Charity for the elderly, the terminally ill and their pets.
Netherholm
Dumfries.
Contents
Dedication p i
Acknowledgements p i
PART I
Childhood and Puppies
Chapter 1 Nettle and Romance p 7
Chapter 2 At home in a new world p 12
Chapter 3 Wheels p 22
Chapter 4 Kirriemuir p 27
Chapter 5 Happenings in Thrums p 35
Chapter 6 Off to Glasgow p 51
Chapter 7 At Christmas Time p 59
Chapter 8 In Memoriam p 63
Coloured Illustrations pp 79-81
PART II
Adolescence and Frisky
Chapter 9 Rock the Wrecker and Ben the Bounder, Kirrie the Assassin and Rikki the Rogue p 67
Chapter 10 Black Dog Days p 83
Chapter 11 Rev and the Thief p 88
Chapter 12 Tâche is a stain p 91
Chapter 13 They are not human are they? p 100
Chapter 14 The Police come knocking p 113
PART III
Reflections
Chapter 15 Dogs reporting for duty p 124
Chapter 16 Poetry inspired by dogs. P 141
Postscript p 147
The Authors other books p 149
PART 1
Children and Puppies
Chapter 1
Nettle and Romance
Marjory Bruce Caldwell née Harvie c 1933.
with her Dalmatian dog, Nettle.
I have rarely been without a dog. That is a surprising fact to me. My father was aloof with dogs. He had suffered many canine confrontations in his parish visitations with Alsatians, Poodles, Boxers, Terriers and latterly Doberman Pinchers, Dogues de Bordeaux and Rottweilers. That had left a mark in his mind. It was not that he disliked dogs; it was that he never got down to their way of thinking to gain their loyalty.
My mother on the other hand loved dogs. As a child there was always a dog in her house and as a teenager she had a Dalmatian. What do they say about giving a dog a bad name? It was indeed called Nettle. It did not sting of course, but it occasionally bit. Today there would be a public outcry leading to a petition fuelled by a hungry press to have a dog put down if it bit anyone. But in those days and in my first fifty years of life, if a dog bit you, you were often told you must have deserved it, asked what you had done to annoy it and of course it was largely your fault that you were bitten. Let sleeping dogs lie, was the sage advice in those days.
Today children bitten by dogs costs US insurance companies $345 million a year, while canine attacks in England are estimated to cost the NHS £3.3 million per year. If there is a breed of dog more dangerous than any other, it is the legislator, politician or insurance company.
The Dangerous Dogs Act of 1991 nevertheless does address and restrict vicious dogs. While the disfigurement of dog bite victims deserve our heartfelt sympathy. Placed in perspective howerer it is reassuring that there is only 1 in 3.9 million dogs ever kills anyone. You are 573 times more likely to be killed by a car and three times more likely to be killed by lightening than killed by a dog.
I came into the life of Glen, a border collie in 1950, the year I was born. So often a dog becomes part of a family. Seen from all dogs’ point of view, it is a very different experience to have a child added to the existing family unlike a family welcoming a new canine member to its fold. The former requires accommodation. The latter requires acceptance.
My father was wife-less, dog-less and practically homeless when he came to Bishopton as a young minister shortly after the end of the Second World War. In this small Renfrewshire village the post was served by Tom Pollock but he had reached retirement. His successor was pretty Nessie Buchan, a young girl of nineteen years of age, who delivered local letters and rode her bicycle to reach farmhouses and rural homes. One day she stopped my father.
‘How would you like to have a dog?’ she asked with a cheerful expression to the new minister.
It was a cruel, hard question to answer. Dogs had been in his family home but his younger brother knew how to tend to them. He became a vet. To Jim, that family Border terrier was a thing to walk on a lead for some exercise, and some exercise for the dog too.
Jim felt grateful for the proposition, but was he ready to take on this responsible step?
Nessie dared not push the matter too far but she seized the opportunity which the minister’s hesitation created.
‘There’s a litter of beautiful pups. They’re collies and they are at the farm at Georgetown.’ (Georgetown was only a short bicycle-ride away from the manse.)
‘I’ll think about it’, he said..... ‘I’ll let you know tomorrow.’
That evening the minister called on his girl-friend who was soon to be his fiancée. He explained his afternoon meeting and proposition. Marjory immediately displayed a keen interest. Her own cocker spaniel, Patsy, had recently died and while Patsy was really her father’s dog she missed the little dog around the house.
‘Let’s tell Nessie we are interested,’ she said.
‘Why not cycle to Georgetown and see the litter ourselves?’
So the day was chosen. It was a brisk one in the month of January bringing tears to the eyes of the cyclists as they pedalled through the bitter morning air.
The farmer’s wife welcomed them and led them to a shed where, in straw, there lay huddled close to their mother, five or six tiny black and white puppies. It was difficult to make a choice. It was difficult to see where one pup ended and the other one began. Eventually they agreed it would be the smallest of the litter, the frailest last-born that was chosen; not for its weakness but for the evenness of his markings and even more kindly look in his eye and the solemn, almost pitiful expression of hope that he’d be chosen that day.
So without any fuss, he was handed over and at the same time the name ‘Glen’ was made his chosen name.
‘Isn’t he adorable,’ exclaimed Marjory.
A small payment was made although more was offered. The dog was pure collie bred, but there was no pedigree certificate. That’s how it was on the farm where a good home was all that was required for the litter.
The little hairy bundle rode silently in the bicycle basket to Marjory’s home where her father brushed and de-matted him. When he was suitably groomed, he was taken to the manse where he settled down immediately on a large black rug before a blazing fire. He was to love that rug to the end of his long happy life but in the meantime, he was lost in the carpet’s deep pile; without a trouble in mind.
To begin with he grew quite imperceptibly, just like a baby, but in the Spring when all the plans for his master’s wedding were being drawn-up, he had grown out of all recognition from the little pup he had been and had become a very loving, very active, and handsome young animal. When the September wedding arrived, he was almost fully grown.
Not long after my parents were married, Glen began attaching himself to Nessie Buchan the post-girl on her visits. He soon accompanied her on all her rounds. This arrangement was in no way attributable to the minister and his wife. It was one of those natural inklings of a collie to serve.
Glen was a noble beast in his appearance. His coat was mainly black with even white patches. His eyes were brown and kindly. His face, mainly white but with matching black borders. His chest was a broad white apron. In every way he was a balanced creature.
His intellect was almost human, so much so that I am now going to attribute thought and speech to him for the rest of his story; for sometimes I feel there is not much that separates a noble beast from a less than noble human.
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