Barns · 25 June 2002
Four banal anecdotes about my dog:
HE IS OUTGOING
When he was smaller, we would let him run free outside. His exploratory ambitions were then fairly limited, and he stayed close by. Now, of course, when he runs free we sometimes get calls from neighbours asking what he’s doing in their kitchen, causing much embarrassment and apology.
FLEXIBLE
He responds to both the French (oh-lee-vair) and English (all-of-er) pronunciations of his name. He also responds to buddy, spaz, dickweed, bolliver, smolliver, bolivia, oliver-yesterdays-have-lighted-fools-the-way-to-dusty-death, dog, bon chien, connard, conrad and paws.
UP, BUT NOT DOWN
Access to the topmost (and busiest) floor of the house is by a very steep wooden staircase – actually it’s more like a ladder. At an early age Oliver was encouraged to climb up it, eventually hop-tugging his way to the top. He now gets up quite easily, and has all manner of fun up there, but has yet to figure out how to get down. A couple of disastrous attempts have made it terrifying even to try.
And so, several times a day, he is picked up and carried – sometimes trembling, clinging tight – like a 40kg sack of potatoes down the stairs. He makes all sorts of fuss about wanting to go downstairs, notably first thing in the morning, but when one bends to pick him up he jumps around like it’s time to play a game. Funny, that.
A THOUGHT-PROVOKING SOUND
Occasionally, when left alone in the house, he will howl. The first time I heard it I was in the garden – gardening – when I noticed what seemed perhaps to be the wrenching creak of a wooden structure, maybe a barn, as it began to collapse after many years of service. There are no such structures nearby, at least none that that I could remember seeing; when I finally did conclude that it was Oliver making the sound, I was interested not so much in why he was howling as I was in why, in an area so very agricultural, there was such a dearth of barns.
I then realized that most all of the farming done nearby is of vineyards, whose demands as far as equipment is concerned are rather light: save for the occasional skinny tractor all the equipment required can be stored in a garage.
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