Watery Woofs
Dogs will teach us everything we need to know about life.
By Jane Thomas
Until you’ve walked across a field shouting, ‘Woof!’ in tones of increasing desperation, you can’t understand the levels of embarrassment a dog name can induce.
We never did learn why the owners had called their Spanish Water Dog ‘Woof’; all we knew is that he was a beautiful dog who drew a lot of attention, and we both looked sheepishly at the ground and mumbled whenever anyone asked his name.
But apart from that – and, perhaps, his incessant need to be around us or he’d howl the place down – everything about this particular housesit was absolutely perfect. I love heading back to Oxford for a dose of travel down memory lane, and this house was set in the heart of Jericho. It’s the most stunning part of a beautiful city and we found ourselves in a four-storey Victorian house packed with antiques, with a long stretch of garden reaching down to the river.
The homeowners invited us over the evening before we were to take over Woof duties and they poured us champagne, showed us how to use the electric motor of their little wooden boat, and told us moments too late that throwing the ball was a big mistake. Whatever we were doing, from then until we left the home a few weeks later, we had to also be picking up an increasingly slobbery tennis ball and lobbing it down the garden.
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