Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [182]
“Four months old. He still has every right to pee,” the breeder insisted.
When we got home we renamed him van Gogh instead of the idiotic “Hagard” inflicted on him by the breeder, and we settled down to live together. It very soon became apparent that van Gogh didn’t just pee all the time, he was a non-stop urination machine, and the strange thing was that he had only to catch sight of a man for there to be a puddle. We stopped letting men into the house, apart from our own, supposing that it was a phase he was going through. We never dreamt of shouting at him – of course not, heaven forbid – but we could not even slightly raise our voices for fear of an immediate flood. As soon as he made a puddle, he would rush around in despair, hiding away or, even more awful, trying to lick it up so we wouldn’t see it. As for going for a walk, we soon found out that van Gogh hated going outside. He disliked everything about it, and his happiest moment was when we came back to the entrance of our block, got into the lift, and went up to the flat. His tail joyfully sprang to attention as soon as we were home. Our house had clearly become his castle, and he would prefer never to leave it.
At the vet’s they told us straight away that the claim he was four months was nonsense. He was at least five months old, and they invited us to guess why the breeder had understated his age.
“Go on, then, why?”
“To get you to take him. People don’t like taking older dogs because somebody has already been training them and there’s no guarantee it has been done properly.”
That turned out to be true, and the vets also found sand in van Gogh’s bladder. Finding the sand cost over 25,000 roubles, and the antibiotics another 2,000 because he had an acute inflammation. Permanent damage. That was our first clue, as it became ever clearer that van Gogh was positively clinging to us as if we were his last hope. He became increasingly nervous of visitors. His fear of other people grew as he grew, and his inclination to hide behind us, his family, was becoming insane. Imagine the scene: somebody approaches us in the street, and this great big dog with huge paws cowers behind my back. He doesn’t bark or growl, just looks at the stranger with such abject terror that you feel scared yourself.
Eventually we realized he was afraid someone would come and take him away. His first owners had been men who took him away. Men, sadly, had become his lifelong enemies.
Clearly we had acquired a dog with serious psychological problems. He was not going to protect us; we were going to have to protect him. Less than ideal.
I rang the breeder: what had happened to the dog in the past? I wasn’t ringing to complain, I just wanted to know so I could help both the dog and myself. The breeder gave in. Before us van Gogh had twice been rejected, though what had gone on was nothing to do with her. But he had been beaten, by men, and they had done something else to frighten him, and then kicked him out.
That seemed credible. We would need to find an animal psychologist and a trainer who worked with dogs individually. Animal psychologists, we discovered, charged $50 a visit if you were lucky. For your $50 you were advised to take a holiday, take the dog to the countryside, let him rest, change your flat, your environment, your town, your country. Nor was all this imparted in a single consultation. Each separate piece of advice cost another $50.
Ouch! No way could we afford that.
So we rushed to find a personal trainer for him. Katya, at 500 roubles an hour from a company called something like “Clever Dog” or “Faithful Friend” informed us that she only worked with dogs of the elite (not elite dogs, but dogs belonging to the rich), and that she was fully booked. She did, nevertheless, find time for us. At 7:00 a.m. Katya arrived. She stuck her