The main dog is getting on. Hes a series of accidents already happening. You see it in his eyes… the end is ever more nigh. I bought BarnBoy as a six-week-old. I wasnt six-weeks-old, I was forty-something. But BarnBoy was 42 days on Gods brown earth when I saw him there in the display window of the yuppie pet shop at Sunshine Plaza. He was in back, lying on his side, dreaming of running. His little paws were totally at the mercy of his DNA as they described tiny frantic circles while some species-wide memory programmed into his soul rounded up herds of godknowswhat from lifetimes past. BarnBoy was a chocolate and caramel and cream sack of fur. When he opened his eyes and I saw that they were green as an algae-infected lake I had to have him. It had been my wifes idea all along to get a dog. I couldnt have cared less. We were living in an apartment in which dogs were not even allowed. Why would I be thinking of dogs? The wife had dropped me off at the ABC radio studios for an interview and a live song or two while she then drove around the nearby townships and immersed herself in the 37 months of historical artefacts and paint-by-the-number architecture that was Maroochydore. She threatened to drive to the Sunshine Plaza, a huge all-in-one shopping precinct we had been to a few times and which I also called Boganvillia. Its the only Bogan hang-out you can see from the moon with the naked eye, I told her once. Sunshine Plaza is an independent principality within the Commonwealth of Australia. In Sunshine Plaza native residents wander around in great packs like lost mammoths in muscle-singlets and trakky-daks, bumping into display cabinets, ride-on trains, hand rails, what they bought for lunch and each other. It is not for the meek. Sunshine Plaza is built for people who know how to spend more money than they actually have. So it was that my wife became entranced by BarnBoys sister BarnGirl. BarnGirl was sitting at the front of the same yuppie pet shop window when my wife had picked me up, convinced me that we absolutely had to have a dog and she knew exactly which one we had to have. When I saw BarnGirl sitting there, brown eyes, black and white speckled fur, looking like every dog everyone owned when I was a kid I was nonplused. Hmmmm, I said. Dont you like her? said the missus. How can I like her? I said. Shes on the other side of a window. To the missus she was a rare treasure, exotic, unthinkable. To me she was every-dog. It was then that I spotted BarnBoy. Raising his little caramel-brown head, yawning, and then opening his hypnotic emerald green eyes. But THAT one is amazing, I said. Thats how we came to have BarnBoy. The green eyes, and dream-running. He was like a battery-powered herd-em-up toy. You put him down on the floor he immediately set to rounding things up. Kittens, puppies, flies, fish, socks, people. He didnt care what they were but they had to be all in one group and he was just the man for the job. At the beach he would sit on the sand and watch as you waded out through the breakers. Soon as your head went under water he would start swimming out to save your sorry ass. Hes a one-of-a-kind, ol BarnBoy. His ticket to Germany cost us three large. Like all Australians when in Europe he became lonesome for kangaroos to chase, cane toads to menace, magpies to scare the living shit out of. But he became famous in this town. He soon had his fans. Teenage girls usually, and pre-teen boys. They swooned over him as if he was Ricky Martin on down-time. They thought he was smarter than some of their friends. And he probably was. He could catch a ball from any and every angle, sit, wait, shake. Sit some more. I would kick a stick up off the ground and BarnBoy would nail it mid-air. He was a natural. He also had a working vocabulary of more than 60 words and he was bilingual. As I pointed out to my daughter one day recently he doesnt really understand the words, darling, but he has a good grasp of the sounds of the words, like knowing the barks of other dogs and which they belonged to. When you called Hello! at the front door BarnBoy would go berserk, barking and wagging his tail and digging his way through to the entryway. But he did the same thing when you called out Cello, mellow, fellow and Othello. Nonetheless he did respond appropriately, more or less, to the following words: Kitchen, stairs, food, fridge, water, jump up, get down, sit, stay, lay down, shake, ball, stick, slower, faster, keep up, run, long one, where is?, look for your ball, Bonnie, Tina, Bella, Paul, Mama, Papa, Oma, Opa, Georgie, baby, drink, eat, relax, street, stop, come, car, pee pee, poo poo and all their German equivalents. He tore a meniscus tendon a few years back. We had him operated on. Hes cut his paws on broken glass, been stung by bees, had the car door slammed on his poor little neck (not by me, might I add), fallen out of sleds, almost drowned in a pond (saved by me, might I add), almost stood on snakes, been attacked by the cat and survived weeks of being alone with me and more weeks alone with Granddad and Grandma. My most memorable time with BarnBoy was once when I was driving him and little Bonnie over to the grandparents place in Esslingen. BarnBoy started whining about ten minutes in to the 35 minute drive. He whined very quietly, then after a couple more minutes he whined louder. Then louder and louder. Then I started making fun of him. Then Bonnie joined in. We were like Oh…. poooooor BarnBoy, he doesnt like being in the back seat, do you BarnBoy? Hmmmm? BarnBoy? And we joked on and on, doing our impressions of BarnBoys by now incessant whine. Then he joined in with us, or so it seemed. And about ten minutes shy of Grandma and Grandpas place the car was filled with a chorus of genuine whines and satirical whines. On and on we went. We hammered him. and then, five minutes shy of the grandfolks place BarnBoy exploded. OH…MY…GOD… said Bonnie and I together. Hed tried to warn us. Hed done his darndest. We, or I, hadnt listened. Id been too busy making fun of the poor little bugger and suddenly the back seat was a toilet. Will he ever forgive me? I doubt it. He seemed to have a sense of genuine shame about it. I tried to ease his mind to no avail but at least he hasnt mentioned it in months. Hes too busy tending to his sores nowadays, his stiff joints. Hes on some tablets, and some others too… for his bones I guess, his ligaments. He comes back from his twice-a-day walks now and collapses on the floor. He dont want to walk too far any more. So we dont make him. He likes to catch ball, even though it puts more strain on his joints when he half-lunges forward to catch it in his mouth. But we figure, its his great remaining joy in life - to catch. We dont let him round up people or sheep or other dogs and there are no kangaroos here. We let him catch his ball even if its the last thing he ever does. I figure hes got a year or two left in him. Im leaning towards two years. I never knew he cared that much for me til one night a couple years back I came back from tour and BarnBoy was waiting for me on the sofa. Wed spent months and months helping get his post-operative leg back to reasonable shape. Id walked him slowly on ever more steep roads and laneways and stairways, forcing him to stop favouring the bad leg. My wife would take him for gentle swims in a nearby pond. After a good session hed be sore the next day but two days later hed be in noticeably better shape. Without those therapeutic walks and swims he would have ended up in either further operations or hed be rolling along on a set of dog-wheels for his rear-end. The very slow walks were very hard work for him but he trusted me, so it seemed. Wed get back from our walks and Id put some ice on his leg or wed massage in some cream or other. Id hold my hands up to perform energetic healing on him and he came to love it, bizarre as it seemed to any visitors or neighbours who dropped in. The waving of hands over his body became a daily thing. He would see me raise my hands and hold them over him and then he would just completely relax and even sigh audibly and then roll a little to allow complete unhindered access. Nowadays hes always waiting for me on the sofa when Im out playing a gig or away on tour. I give him a cuddle, wave my hands over him a few times, and he relaxes and lets me at it. BarnBoy also knows a good many expletives. I regret it when I curse in front of him because he always thinks Im cursing him. Sometimes I am, but sometimes its the mailman or the weather or a phone call that wasnt returned etc etc etc. I wish I could take back all those unintended curses from the psyche of our little Olive-eyed sheep-herder. I really do. If he was half as clever it would not have effected him near as much. But if he was half as clever he wouldnt be our BarnBoy, would he?
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 20:44:02 +0000
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