One Stray Dog? Part 2 by Ronald Mackay
“Bonjour, Ron. J’ai good news, moi!”
Yvette, our Animal Control Officer, greeted me outside the township office with smiling face and her distinct brand of francophone enthusiasm. Her hair had been dyed and cut into a page-boy style that made her look like a cross between an angelic Santa Clause helper and Cruella de Vil. The upside was that her recent makeover had reinforced her confidence. I believed I could guess what–or more likely who–had spurred her to take such extreme measures to alter her appearance. It had to be the Dog Lady, as I had come to think of her.
But Yvette was impatient to share her recent triumph, so I stood in the pale fall sunlight and listened.
“Remember, you, dat new townie? Well, moi, je fixed her up good, me! Real good!”
I was right! It was the blond with the Scottish deerhound–whether one or many hounds was yet to be seen–who’d provoked her new look. I nodded for her to continue. I guessed it was going to be a revenge story.
“Remember her, you? Dat blond bitch, she wid no dog collar and no tag?”
I nodded.
“Bien! Alors, into de Township office she come wid her hound. I hear her ax: ‘Is Yvette here?’ I hear her say: ‘I wana speak Yvette, now.’ But me, I make her wait, me! And wait. Tabarnak!” Yvette smiled at the memory of how she got even with the lady she’s christened the ‘blond bitch’.
“And then?”
“’I come register my deerhound,’ she tell me. Comme ça! Not polite, not real rude neither. Me? I didn’t say a word, me! I show her the byelaw. I take ‘er money. I register ‘er hound. I give ‘er a tag. I tell ‘er buy a collar and fix de tag like de byelaw say.”
She grinned impishly–or perhaps evilly–with self-satisfaction, convinced she’d bettered her adversary.
“One tag?” I intentionally kept my voice neutral so as not to alert Yvette to my suspicions.
“One chien, one tag. Dat’s de rule. Now she know our byelaw, her!”
“Dog or bitch?” I asked.
“Dog! She de bitch, her! Who need two!” Yvette smiled, pleased with her characterisation of the newbie from Toronto. “So dat’s it, den! I done an’ dusted her good, me, eh?”
Did you really, Yvette? I wondered. One dog? I’ve seen one deerhound at my farm, four at the old Wilson place, and heard others bark. Is the newbie shrugging Yvette off her back by pretending to have only one hound? Is she counting on no one being able to distinguish one from another? And if she is, why? To save a few dollars? Or was a more perverse, even nefarious, motive behind this Dog Lady’s irregular behaviour?
Later that week, as I emerged from Canadian Tire, there was warmth in the sun and the maple trees glowed with brilliant colour. But my feeling of comfort ended abruptly. On Main Street, I spotted the Dog Lady. Her hand was clutching a rope leash, a hound purposefully straining ahead of her. Not trained to ‘heel’ as many working dogs are, I noted.
Watching, I saw a subtle resemblance between mistress and dog. Both sleek, both determined, both autocratic, yet both somehow detached. Moreover, whereas her hound’s eyes appeared to be seeking animal movement in the distance, the Dog Lady’s gaze was imperiously self-conscious as if directed inwards. She seemed intent on projecting an egotistical message: ‘Look at me with this Scottish deerhound I possess. Have you ever before seen anything like us?’
And I had to admit that the pair made an eye-catching sight. They progressed rather than walked as if disdainful of other normal, common or garden pedestrians. As if she were contemptuous of simple villagers going about their simple daily business.
I also saw that the Dog Lady’s studied look, unlike her dog’s, was mostly directed inwards on herself. A narcissist, I decided. The Dog Lady’s a narcissist!
I had to stand in the middle of the sidewalk to get her attention. “Good morning,” I said.
“You again!” She glared at me. “This meeting is certainly not of my choosing.”
At least she’s recognised me! I thought but wondered at such hostility. Or was it just that she disliked people in general? Her dog however, closer to me and friendlier, sniffed. I extended my hand.
Not the animal she took to Yvette to be registered. This one’s a bitch, not a dog!
“You must excuse her curiosity. She seldom leaves the farm.”
But my interest was other. “Congratulations on the collar.”
“I play by the rules.”
“The Township will be glad to hear it,” I replied but inwardly said, Liar!
"My interest is less on the benefits Glengarry may afford me, and more on the value I may bring to the Township."
Really? I wondered at her easy command of rhetoric and her obvious self-absorption. What might she believe she can bring to Glengarry?
I chose to ignore the fact that she might just be playing with me. Instead, I focused on the matter at hand. The bylaw concerning the duties of dog owners; the bylaw Yvette was responsible for enforcing.
Play by the rules, do you? I thought. Yet you register a single dog, buy a single tag and almost certainly use the same to bring whichever dog or bitch you choose, into the village. You flout the byelaw. You cheat the Township by evading tax. You, Dog Lady, mock not only Yvette the animal welfare officer, you also mock every other taxpayer in Glengarry!
I wasn’t going to let the moment pass.
“And the males I met at the gate to your place last week?” My intonation made clear that it was a question. I saw her hesitate, but she quickly regained her composure.
“Males?” She countered, frowning, as if puzzled.
“Males,” I repeated. The day I visited. The day you asked me to leave. By your new gate. Four males.”
“Oh! These!” She dismissed my query with a flick of her blond head. “I’ll breed Maite when she comes into season.” She gestured to the bitch on the lead. “Those dogs you saw were visitors. They belong to others. I was checking their suitability.”
I noticed she used the past tense, suggesting these ‘visitors’ had long gone.
Sounds like an improvised fabrication, I said to myself. And she expects me to believe her!
However, experience had taught me that there are those it’s wise to be wary of. My intuition told me that The Dog Lady was one such to be mightily wary of. Expressionless, I nodded. My intentionally neutral reaction was not lost on her, however.
She appears able to read minds! She sees my doubts. But this townie from Toronto may underestimate us country people. She may underestimate Yvette and perhaps others in this township. If she does, she’s likely to be making a big mistake!
She’d annoyed Yvette. Now Yvette had it in for her. She’d succeeded in annoying me and planting distrust as well. ‘What can this devious woman be up to?’ I watched her flounce off after her Maite, as if the sleek, grey deerhound were an exclusive, personal accessory she wore in order to be admired by all. She strutted as if advertising, ‘Look at me. Look at my Scottish Deerhound. You provincials have never seen anything like us before!’
But her royal advance was rudely interrupted. Alex and Donald A, slightly the worse for wear, emerged abruptly from the hotel bar and barely avoided colliding with her. Her look of annoyance turned into a grimace of disgust. Donald A and Alex bathed once a year, in spring. Months had passed since their annual ablutions.
Maite’s reaction to the stench these two old famers permanently gave off was quite different. Barn odours, human odours and worse were pure delight to her. With doggie enthusiasm, she thrust her muzzle first into Donald A’s crotch and then into Alex’s. Alex, a dog lover since childhood, defended his valuables with his left hand and put his right out to pet Maite. The Dog Lady grimaced and gave a yank on the dog’s lead, a yank brutal enough to let Maite know that two noxious, grungy men were beyond the pale. Taking control, the Dog Lady immediately continued her procession, now holding Maite on a shorter leash and leaving poor old, well-meaning Alex with his lonely hand extended and a look of such bewildered deprivation on his face that I felt his hurt.
As if out of empathy for my neighbours Donald A and Alex, or maybe out of outrage at the Dog Lady’s treatment of two lonely old men who sought the affection of all that was likely to return theirs–a dog–the sun disappeared behind a dark cloud, threatening rain.
Rattled and perplexed, I watched the solitary brothers, turn back into the bar to seek solace for the brutal snub they’d suffered. I stowed my purchase from Canadian Tire inside my truck, locked the door, and pondered going for a coffee.
It seems that every time I encounter The Dog Lady, she leaves me with a deep need to ponder! This time, however, I need more than coffee to find answers.
So, I drove through Alexandria, up Highway 30 to Fassifern, turned left onto the 6th Concession and didn’t stop until I reached the tiny hamlet of Greenfield. In front of a weathered shed bearing the faded hand-painted sign ‘Murpaw’s General Store Est. 1847’, I parked and got out. I knew that the sign barely hinted at all that Murpaw’s was able to offer.
Unanswered questions bothered me. I wasn’t even sure what the questions were.
Are they merely doubts? Suspicions? If anybody can offer help, my friend Sylvester Murpaw may be the man!
Sylvester, a great lumbering bear, anywhere between middle age and ancient, a shock of silver hair and a broad smile, flung open the door to his unusual establishment and roared: “Bienvenue, mon ami! You’ve been neglecting your old friend!”
The Valkyrie and her single Scottish Deerhound
