HAWKSMOOR - A Progress Report

The first Maremma I met face to face was Vinnie. Vinnie sat on a bench in an exhibition tent. I looked at him and I thought; 'put a pair of shades on his big lupo nose and what you see is 'Joe Cool'. I had to have him or failing that, get one of his offspring.

Mrs Downes, Vinnie's keeper, was not willing to hand him over without a fight, however she promised to consider my application for one of Joe Cool's progeny. Application to be submitted in triplicate, please.

When I came to pick a puppy I did not quite know what to expect. Getting from Twickenham to Y Trallwng was a piece of cake.

The Turbo kept humming, the rain was beating down, Radio 5 Live had Alan Green pretending to go bonkers over Lokomotive Hollywood FC against Torpedo Hull, in other words, the world was as it should be on any given Saturday in this here country.

Getting deeper and deeper into Owen Glyndwr's territory became increasingly troublesome. The road signs sported longer and longer nouns, all virtually bereft of vowels. The soft bleating of woolly things somewhere off in the fog grew intense.

The ditches next to the roads were littered with dead English badgers having met their deserved fates as invaders. When the road finally ran out, I was met by Jacqui Downes, a small calm women who guided me up various hills past more bleating sheep, blue-green wet grass and decaying stone fences.

On entering the house, I was greeted by Nicola, a thin, pretty lass with large eyes and an elderly Maremma, both lolling on the carpet. The girl was friendly enough, obviously used to city slickers, bent on inspecting unsuspecting puppies. The elderly Maremma looked at me and issued one short bark, which induced me to jump half way up to the ceiling.

Mrs Downes assured me that the elderly Maremma had decided that I was ok, for the time being, at least.

Next in came a harassed looking Mother Polly loosely accompanied by a sizeable congregation of small white puppies sporting oversized paws.

After about an hour of observing Polly's and Vinnie's children, I decided on one of the two larger looking boys. It was pointed out to me that the one I had picked was a bit on the pink pawed side, but I was taken by the fact that the guy was chubby and confident. He also would have to be fed less than his brothers and sisters in years to come, for he already had eaten more than most of the others, or so it seemed.

Hawksmoor was duly marked with nail varnish on his bottom and returned to the expert care of his long-suffering mother.

About three weeks later, I returned to Powys, this time with my better half, a tall Californian horse and cat lover, who subsides on a precarious diet of distilled water and kernels. She used to own a standard poodle in her childhood, who probably had to live on similar sustenance, poor creature.

After many anxious questions: (will he eat steamed salmon; is it ok to raise him as a Methodist; how do we get him to support London Welsh; will he let us into our house when we come home at night; what do we do in case he decides to vote Tory?), we finally drove off back down the hills and towards Southern civilisation as we understand it.

The arrangement was as follows:
I put my chauffeur's cap on, the Californian and the puppy sat in the back. He was ever so quiet, keeping one of his paws on her lap, a habit he has maintained to this day.

He was very good, even declining to take a pee on the outskirts of the M25, preferring to get to Twickenham as quickly as possible.

The Californian claims that was because she kept whispering a magic word into his perfectly shaped right ear on a regular basis.

When we got home it was dark.

Next problem was getting him into the house without upsetting the other occupants, all of whom are very much set into their respective ways.

I dropped Judith, the Californian, at the booze shop at the corner, and went home to fetch Katie, the Samoyed.

Katie was none too pleased having been home all day with the cats.

Finally, she condescended to walk up the street with me and sure enough, there were Judith and the recently acquired Welsh-Italian in her arms loitering at the corner.

Katie was tricked into thinking that Hawksmoor was a present for her; Katie's very own dog, so to speak, a new lowest rung on the hierarchy ladder, in fact a new lowest of the low rung on the ladder at Katie's traditional home and abode, which is aptly named after her own perfectly formed feet: Roundpaw House.

Kate immediately took to the proposed arrangement.

Katie had been brought up under a much harsher regime: five years ago, she came and joined an archaic set up as the new puppy. The place was occupied by one grumpy German who had forgotten where the hoover was hidden and two very hierarchically inclined Siberian Huskies who shared their minder's concept of 'we do not approve of drastic changes to our routines, actually, we do not tolerate any changes at all!'

Lacey, the female husky was prone to lift a leg rather than squatting down daintily and Misha, the dog, used to stand in the middle of the park, waiting for the other mutts to come to him and ask whether it was ok for them to use the facilities on offer.

In the beginning Katie believed herself to be a very, very junior Husky.

This thinking was encouraged by all the residents concerned.

Some time ago, the Huskies have gone to the great tundra in the sky, so now Katie believes herself to be the very senior Husky indeed.

When Hawksmoor arrived, the cats reacted differently. They were not amused.

Hawksmoor in his innocence was lucky at first. That evening he was too tired to chase the cats which, for the moment, spared him untold grief.

The cats are brother and sister. Upon Hawksmoor's arrival, the female cat, named Abstraction, immediately realised that there was yet another smelly uncouth intruder who knew nothing, but was already larger than her.

Abbie does three things very well and three things only: she sleeps, catches frogs from the garden pond and is very small to look at.

Her brother, fondly known as Flipper (he used to fall into the pond a lot) or as Torquemada, on his more benign days, decided to groom the stupid new dog into some sort of post he can rub against when he feels like it. Using Hawksmoor, Flipper pets himself.

Over the last year Torquemada and little Hawksmoor have become firm friends.

Katie did most of the work: she had Hawksmoor house trained in a couple of weeks, she pointed out to him all the plants in the garden she is not allowed to eat and taught him to pull on the lead as all self respecting Huskies should.

Hawksmoor loves women, especially Judith and his sister Cielo, who lives at the other end of the park, but most of all he adores Katie. I hardly get a look in.

He started to surprise us right from the beginning: he slept for hours on the kitchen flagstones. This turned out to be his only occupation for a long time.

At first he filled about one and one half squares when fully stretched out.

Then he decided to sleep even more. Every afternoon he got up and was half an inch taller than in the morning before breakfast.

This went on until Christmas, when he overtook Katie in height.

Katie started to look a bit smaller than usual; this was because Hawksmoor had eaten her tail feathers and most of her ruff. She looked a very streamlined Samoyed. The burghers in Richmond Park were giving me dirty looks, an arrest instigated by the 'Save Southern Mammals Society' was very much on the cards.

Hawksmoor turned out to be most deliberate in his attitude to command and response. At first I resigned myself to the fact that he was not Rhodes scholar material, just like Huskies, who are friendly but traditionally not the sharpest knifes in the drawer.

Alas, Judith decided that the boy was very fit for life indeed. 'He is selective in his responses', she said, ' men do not see this, men are dumb'.

Then came the day when Hawksmoor got locked into the bathroom. We got him out may be twenty minutes after the door clicked shut.

This was too hasty a reaction on our part for it had not left him enough time to chew through the door, ample time to finish off the wall to wall carpet, though.

He was perfectly happy to be released from his confinement, wagging his tail enthusiastically thanking us while looking back over his shoulder pleased with the work he had accomplished.

I was willing to let this go bye. 'Stupid 'ole carpet, shame about the door, poor little dog', etc.

Judith's reaction was different: No ' little Bunny, Hawksmoor you must have been so desperate, you poor little thing', or anything like that….

Here she stood and the calculator in her head went buzzin': 'You little hard case, this was a 200 quid carpet, plus the 300 pound's worth of trees and garden plants you've eaten in the past! You owe me!'

After some deliberation, all six of us dismissed the notion of training him to become an Anglican Vicar within the next three month, so that we may live off his stipend for the rest of his tenure at St. Paul's.

After two days of solemn introspection, Judith finally put it to us: either Hawksmoor (no longer 'my lovely Bunny' for the time being) was going to sit on an old blanket in front of Tesco's with a tin cup around his neck, setting out on the long road of making up for the financial devastation he had inflicted on her, (and by the way, he cannot be trusted with the collection cup, so you will have to sit next to him on the old blanket, Jens, you kraut), or he will have to make up the difference in stud fees.

Hawksmoor did not mind the old blanket suggestion, which after all would feature him at his best, i.e., asleep and relaxed, but I thought this ploy ill advised.

I know too many senior people in the retail industry professionally. Any of them seeing me lingering on the old blanket in the company of a large white dog wearing sunglasses could mean an uphill struggle for maintaining credibility next time they ask me to do a feasibility study on one of their hare brained future ventures.

I then explained the finer details of stud duty to him. All of a sudden, he showed the keen comprehension and positive acceptance of the bright young thing I always hoped he would turn into.