Behaving Badly Read Free

a friend. He paid four hundred quid for it,’ she muttered bitterly. ‘And they swore that dachshunds are good with kids.’
    ‘Well, they usually are good with children. They’re very sweet-natured.’
    ‘Look, I’m not taking no chances, and that’s that. It’s not biting any child of mine and getting away with it,’ she added indignantly.
    ‘But there are rescue homes, I feel it’s unfair—’
    ‘But who’d want a dodgy dachshund? My mind’s made up,’ she said, as she snapped open her handbag. ‘You just tell me how much.’ And I was just about to go and consult the Principal Vet because I really didn’t want to do it, when I noticed that the dog was whining quietly and shaking its head. I lifted up its ear flaps and looked inside. Embedded in its left ear was the broken-off end of a child’s knitting needle.
    ‘ Jesus ,’ I breathed. Holding the dog firmly, I gingerly removed it, then held it up. ‘This is why he bit your daughter.’
    The woman stared at it, mutely. ‘Oh. Well…as I say, she was playing with the dog, wasn’t she? She was just playing. She’s only five.’
    ‘But can you imagine how much that must have hurt?’
    ‘He still shouldn’t have bitten her though, should he?’

    I felt my jaw slacken. ‘What else was he supposed to do? Write her a solicitor’s letter? Ring the RSPCA? He’s a dog . He did what any dog would do.’
    ‘Yes, but—’
    ‘There isn’t a but! That’s dog behaviour. If we annoy them enough, they’ll probably bite. What would you do if someone stabbed you in the ear? I imagine you might react!’
    ‘I want it put down,’ she insisted, jabbing a bejewelled finger at me. ‘It’s my dachshund and I want it put down.’
    ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I won’t. I refuse to murder your dog,’ I added politely. She looked extremely offended at that; and she said in that case she’d take it to another vet’s. But I was one step ahead. I calmly pointed out that there was absolutely no need to ‘try her luck elsewhere’, because I’d be more than happy to keep it myself. She hesitated, then, giving me a look which combined hostility with shame—an unusual mixture—she left. She’d never even told me the dog’s name. So I called him Herman. Herman the German. That was four years ago.
    The saddest thing of all was Herman’s distress at her departure—he whimpered inconsolably after she’d left. He might not have felt quite so upset if I’d been able to apprise him of the awful truth.
    ‘Don’t waste your tears,’ I told him. ‘She didn’t deserve you. You’re going to be a lot better off with me.’ Within a week Herman seemed to think so too, for he seemed grateful for my care and we’d started to bond, and we’ve been pretty inseparable ever since. But it was saving him from a premature end which got me thinking seriously about changing career. I’d already noticed how, in most cases, it isn’t the animal which has the ‘problem’, it’s the humans —and I realized how interesting it could be working with that. A week later I went to a lecture given by a vet who’d retrained asa behaviourist, and I decided that that was what I would do too. I’d still be working with animals, just as I’d always wanted, but without the relentless pressure and stress.
    I had no serious financial commitments then, so I used my savings to go back to school. I went to Edinburgh for a year—with Herman—to do an MSc in Animal Behaviour, and I had a fascinating time. We didn’t study only companion animals, although that’s a large part of it, we studied many other species as well. We learned about primate behaviour, about farm animals, and birds, and deer; and there were lectures on marine animals and zoo animals too. I’ll never forget the things we learned. That polar bears are always left-handed, for example, and that chickens prefer pop music to rock. That if you chat pleasantly to a cow it will yield more milk, and that when a cat