Aside
from the first six years which, in my failing memory, have become a
gritty urban life on the wrong side of the A3 in Guildford, where a
toddler can fall into a snowdrift on a footbridge and not be
discovered for weeks, during which time he learns to fend for
himself, ultimately running a gang of sentient snowmen on the mean
streets of Stoughton (my parents assure me I was not in there for
more than thirty seconds and I should stop moaning about it and
telling massive great lies) I have lived most of my life in beautiful
Devon, and
have lived
with a dog for more of it than I haven't (I would say I've owned
dogs, but that would imply that I have some kind of control over the
stubborn furry wankers). This is why it is surprising that for most
of my life, I have shown little to no interest in the bits of Devon
that aren't pubs.
In
my defence, my first dog, Rambo, was more than happy to just walk
round the corner to the Portobello, where the barmaids would feed him
kit-kats and Guinness. He was very much a town dog, since we lived in
Bideford at the time, and his favourite walks were on weekend
mornings – hoovering up leftover takeaways from the pavements –
he only needed a lead for the look of the thing and very rarely moved
more than a couple of feet from my ankle. By the time we moved out
here to the countryside his arthritis was so bad that it was all he
could do to get to the pub for a saucer of Guinness and a bag of pork
scratchings without me having to carry him most of the way back.
Rambo
and I, when we were young and pretty
Rizla,
my second dog, was fond of big walks up on the moors, but since
she was so easy to walk on the not-Dartmoor-moors near home – since
she was terrified of sheep and cows, and could run around off lead
wherever we went – I didn't often get out to the real
Dartmoor-moors with her. My cat, Kahlo
(sometimes referred to as Bitey)
also got sulky if she didn't come out for walks with us, and we
couldn't take her in the car, so nearby was where we went. Rizla was
also far too easily tempted by the lure of pork scratchings in the
pub, and was friendly enough that that was what we did.
Rizla
was every bit as upset about the cat muscling in on her walks as she
looks here
There
used to be two cat-dogs running about with her until Heisenberg
died
But
since I got Sky a year ago, it's all been a bit different. She's
an Alaskan Malamute, which, if you've never owned one, is a bit like
having a pet cow. She is enormous, stubborn, needs rubbing down,
brushing and drying as soon as you get in from a walk if you don't
want her to get a million different weird skin infections (so maybe
it's more like having a horse than a cow?) and seems a lot less
murdery than she really is (not cow-like at all, poor choice of
simile, I apologise – wolf seemed too obvious). My step-daughter
doesn't believe me that Sky is quite so murdery, but then she hasn't
witnessed it firsthand since she doesn't live with us anymore. She
just sees the big cute fluffy doggy and can't believe it is actually
mostly wolf, with all the prey instincts that that entails. Her view
of the animal kingdom has been warped by a weakness for Disney films,
and she tends to anthropomorphise dogs. Also she has never seen Sky
throwing a rabbit around the garden prior to ripping it to pieces, or
dragging a mole from its hole, or ripping the tail feather off a
pheasant. I have, and I am getting a lot better at stopping her now.
My
wife now works nearly every Saturday morning, so I resolved, about a
year ago, to go up a different tor every weekend and get a selfie
with the big dog. Thus getting out and about on the moors, and
getting valuable
instagram likes at the same time. Sadly, as with everything,
there have been mitigating circumstances: Devon weather (such as the
weekend we went up there last year and I couldn't see Sky if she went
to the end of her lead – I have never been so glad of having a
navigation app on my phone); laziness – it is all too easy to just
hop out of the door and have a quick run over the not-Dartmoor-moors
by the house – especially since there's usually a bit where Sky can
get off the lead for a bit there: I'm relatively confident that she
can't take out a cow; Sky's current reluctance to just get in the
fucking picture – which is leading to me getting covered in crap
trying to hold on to a wolf that has just rolled in everything awful
while waving a phone in its face; and hangovers – which joyfully
continue to affect most aspects of my weekends.
Sky
refused to even turn around, I am making all the effort in this
relationship
Despite
Dartmoor's reputation as a huge, bleak, lonely place – which I can
see from my garden: Yes Tor, looming like Mount Doom in the distance
– it is in fact almost impossible to find a weekend when the moors
are not covered in school kids doing Ten Tors training. It's not just
the kids with massive rucksacks though, it's as crowded as Oxford
Street out there on a nice day, hikers of all ages with all the gear,
crushing themselves into awkward positions on the ground trying to
get the perfect angle for their selfie – ensuring they get the
sheep, the pile of rocks, their artfully made sandwich, travel coffee
mug and all their expensive hiking gear in shot to maximise those
all-important instragram likes.
I
can be as withering about them as I like, bouncing around the moors
in my cheap wellies and battered straw hat, but I am no better. Since
I started writing books, and thus having to have a marketable online
presence (apparently) I too now have to rack up those
all-important instagram likes. Which means getting those selfies
perfect, this is where the photogenic doggy becomes indispensable.
Just this morning I was lying in a muddy pit atop East Mill Tor,
holding on to the sheep-poo-covered neck of my filthy Malamute and
begging her to stay in shot so that we could get that perfect
picture.
This
was a lot more painful than it looks
Neither
of us are actually happy
Instagram
is a lie
A
couple of weeks ago I was in a similar position on top of High
Willhays when my hat blew away in the relentless Devon wind. I let it
go just to get the picture (then gave chase, and got it in the end)
which makes me question my judgement. I never took photos before
this. I still forget to most of the time, I find memories better than
photos, since they can be fuzzier, blurrier and paint a more
flattering picture of you when you look back on them later.
This
picture serves no purpose and I very nearly lost a perfectly good hat
to get it
Sad
to say, I do spend a lot of my walks with Sky wishing I had done them
with Rizla – who as I have said, was very well behaved off a lead.
She would run off, but come back as soon as I whistled the Superman
theme to her (much of this may have been tempered by nostalgia, she
rolled in fox shit as much as any other collie). Whereas this is
Sky's idea of recall.
Never
let it be said that dogs don't have a sense of humour
Added
to which, the most aggressive thing Rizla ever did to another animal
was lick a kitten's head slightly too aggressively (by which I mean
she put Bitey's
entire head in her mouth when she tried to steal her dinner) whereas
Sky will try and eat anything that looks edible, especially if it's
moving, so she is not ever allowed off her lead. This makes short
cuts across moorland rather more treacherous than expected, since
those ever so handy not-quite-paths are easy enough to pick your way
across on your own, but when you are being dragged by a 30 kilo wolf
trying to get at a sheep that looked at her funny, they are a little
more tricky, and I spend an inordinate amount of time digging my
boots into the mud, trying and failing to haul her back in and
praying I don't smash my head in on the rocks as I slide ever further
downwards on my heels. I fell over once (I say once, it happens a lot
these days), she just got to the end of her lead and looked back at
me with a shrug, didn't even come back to check I wasn't dead.
This
is quite problematic for a writer, since we spend a lot of time while
walking desperately trying to scrawl down notes for the amazing idea
we just had. This is simple when your dog happily jumps about not
trying to kill everything in sight, and lets you get on with it. Not
so much when she is attached to one of your arms by a rope and
doesn't want to stop – ever. This is why I have started falling
over more often, and have no record of my amazing ideas. It also
leads to long cuts through bogs and marshes as we have to leave the
nice, flat, easy-to-walk-on-with-a-big-dog-on-a-lead path because
some other, smaller, better-behaved dogs have turned up.
Ultimately,
I am very lucky to live where I live, and be able to go walking on
Dartmoor within ten minutes of leaving my house. Admittedly, the
nearest bit we can get to is also an army firing range, so it does
present a few unique dangers in that respect, but what's life without
a little danger. I am also very lucky to share my life with a very
beautiful (also time-consuming, annoying, badly behaved and stubborn)
animal, that listens to all my crap, inspires me to write, gets me
out of the house, melts my heart every time she looks at me and will
continue to earn me those
all-important instagram likes (along with those few accounts that
automatically retweet anything hashtagged as #Dartmoor and #Devon).
Long live our never ending Tor
Tour.
