I have experienced a lot of dog related incidents over the past few months, which can only be described as bizarre.
Today, I was on a train from Twickenham to Brentford and a lady got on at Hounslow with a wheely case in one hand and a puppy in a large cage in the other.
Curiously, the atmosphere in the vicinity of the small dog changed almost immediately when people caught sight of him. It went from an detached indifference to common adoration of the little bundle of snuffley cuteness. Sometimes people were even breaking off their simpering stares to smilingly glance at each other in a brief collective moment of common love for the little yapper. The people near the cage seemed bonded to this chap and therefore warming to each other, exploring their common love with ooh's and ah's and raised eyebrowed glances of acknowledged loveliness.
I wonder what their reaction would have been if the lady had brought on board a giant caged spider, all jerky, hissing and seemingly angry at the world at it's unjust imprisonment. I suspect we would have all felt terrorised and threatened by such a sight, driven to move away from it all costs perhaps stampeding over the very same people you coo-ed with to get away from the hairy beast. Who knows? But what if the jerkiness was just a awkward method of movement brought on by it's abundance of limbs? It could have been hissing love at everyone as far as you could tell. And, conversely to this, the puppy's method of communication (licking and nipping the cage and staring at all external movement with wonderment and exaggerated confusion) may have been cutely masking a psychotic rage. There must have been a reason why it was in a cage... Indeed.
Whilst in a hotel in Poland recently, an International Dog Show was being held in the town at the same time as I was staying there. Consequently, the hotel I was staying at was full of dogs. They were everywhere: Proud ones, showy ones, prima donnas, aggressive and pretty ones. Even genuinely nice and intelligent ones that seemed happy with just being around all the hoop-la. All the canine toing and froing, however, made the hotel smell really bad and the dogs seemed loath to admit that it had anything to do with them. Just like the way they try and disassociate themselves from their lower halves when compelled to shit on the streets as if it had nothing to do with them and was some sort of automated ablution that just happened to be irksomely timed at this precise moment.
My genuinely confusing moment, however, was stepping into a lift, inserting the passkey to allow me to choose my floor and then being calmly followed in by a dachshund. The dog assumed a normal lift type stance by turning around to anonymously face the door as we moved off and then looked up at me as if to acknowledge my stare that suggested a casual greeting humans would exchange. He returned to staring at the lift door as if completely familiar and comfortable with this process and when I got off at my floor, it looked out from the lift at me almost raising it's eyebrows in another casual close-off of our brief encounter. Very confusing. Why did the dog get in with me? Did it enjoy the standard, anonymous lift routine as a relaxing pre-cursor to the nerve-jangling intensity of dog shows? Perhaps it was tragically, yet comically lost? Perhaps it was a doggy greeter for the hotel's furrier guests?
The puppy in a cage on the train had a uniting effect on the people that could see it so I have written to South West Trains to ask for them to be installed, two to a carriage, immediately. Obviously, I have requested that they not be fed so as to further unite the passengers in a juxtaposed bonhomie of disgust at the people who could do so a thing. Perhaps this uniting in a common cause could spur us all in to speak out in horror against fare increases too?
It's only a matter of time before we achieve collective bargaining powers for negotiation of tickets prices and discounts on doggy treats.
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