“Jesse! Jesse! Jeeeeeeeeesseeeeeeeee! Aw! Fur Fucks S**e!”  (Japanese moonshine and rhymes with ‘cake’)

She didn’t stop, she just bolted like a race horse with a massive grin as if to say:

“On your marks… TOO LATE!” 

Off she’d run like a mad thing, happy and free in the opposite direction knowing this is her time to shine and throw all she was taught to the wind and follow it and even try to bite it and me knowing it will be a long trek home and very, very late. I cant lie. It used to drive me nuts. It’s as if she was saying:

“Hey, I’ll be okay, don’t mind me, you go and do what you need to go and do; like collect drift wood and sea garbage and spend as long as you want photographing washed up oil drums and giant tyres and maybe come back in a couple of dog hours and watch me break dancing on a dead seal and if Badger tells you he done it first – he’s wrong, it’s just what blokeydogs do.’”

Here’s her plan of departure, structured and well practiced, in three phases:

Phase One: The Obedient Well Behaved Companion.

Sit, pant and smile by your side, looking up from time to time to say:

“Isn’t it a lovely evening! Look at that red bucket in the distance and the oyster catcher pecking around for nibbles&nosh (great name for a posh tea shop on the English coast)?…Oh! A piece of gnarled fabric-like seaweed, rolling along the wet sand, might pick that up later for an investigative snout sniff…is that a dog’s tail in the dunes?”

Phase Two: Reverting Back To Being a Pup.

Get restless and do her Disco Dancing Sphinx Routine with butt-tail high in the air, front paws stretched out flat on the sand then jump side to side laughing and barking in sharp shouts with her tongue hanging out, like a drunk mans tie, shouting;

“C’mon! Its playtime!”

Phase Three: Mastering The Art Of The Disappearing Act.

Vanished.

Completely. 

Gone. 

I would walk in the direction of where I last saw her, hoping it was the right way. In the distance I could make out small dark shapes thinking it was her but on closer inspection, it would turn out to be a half submerged fish box or a seawrack covered day-glo buoy. No matter how many times she would spring this Houdini trick on me, I would still get the panic-parent-pangs of:  

Shit! She’s been eaten by a whale shark or one of the locals! She’s been kidnapped by Portnoo Pirates or had a heart attack!She’s fallen down a blowhole or drowned in a rockpool! I better take that half submerged fish box to use as a stretcher!” 

99 times out of 100 I would find her in her favourite yoga position: back end reaching for the clouds, hind legs stretched straight with the rest of her body in a diving position down a hole the size of a small crater. When she knew I was standing there, she would stop and whisper: 

“can’t see me” 

Then pop her head out, rest on the mound of debris piled up around her belly and from behind a mask of wet sand, her eyes would shout: 

“You’d never guess what I’ve found? More wet sand and lots of it! C’mon! Grab a shovel and lets dig a big hole for no other reason than to dig a big hole!” 

Her tail would say it all: wagging proud and happy with her little escapade. 

When she got so far, she would stop, sit down, watch you stroll by and when she knew that you knew that she wasn’t going any further, she would say:

“I’ll wait here for you, and on your return, when your camera and note book are full of cracked sand patterns, end of the world clouds and one line poem ideas, we can both go back to the car together?”

Then she’d sit motionless like a furry porcelain statue on the mantlepiece (even when it was raining — which was often) facing in the opposite direction, towards the car park and home. One day I put her steadfastness and stubbornness to the test. I kept on walking, she kept on sitting. Every now and then I would turn my head to see if there was any movement. 

Nothing. 

She kept on sitting, I kept on walking.

Every now and then she would turn her head to see if I was making my way back. 

Nothing. 

The stalemate had begun but only lasted as long as I could bare it. I walked so far out of sight, that when I couldn’t see her, I  decided I better get back as it was getting dark and the rains were coming down heavy. I was half hoping that she’d be making her way towards me, but no. When I finally returned, she was sitting in the exact same spot as I left her. She gave a slight turn of the head, looked up, blinked and said:

“I think I won that one?” 

And, as an after thought she said: 

“Shall we go home now?” 

Then proceeded to waddle her bouncy butt and tail, like Peppe Le Skunk, back to the car park. At times we would sit on the soft dunes and watch the long sunset. The soft low roar of the sea getting louder as it got darker til sound  covered sight and it felt like you were watching the last light of eternity fade under deep purple clouds, finally leaving a faint delicate pink blood line on the horizon then dark muted colours like a Rothko and still the steady beat of waves visible, only by sound.

I can still see our silhouettes, staring out to sea, watching Saturn sparkle bright just above the horizon, like old sea dogs, happy side by side, then I’d give her a hug and say:

“I love you Jesse.” 

And she would reply:

“Don’t get all mushy on me.”

Then slowly we’d straggle back along the beach and disappear into the soft wet darkness, passing the crop of flat rock where me and my wife ‘Tied The Knot’ by a Purple Robed Irish Female Druid, with home made mead and rings, with friends and family and poems to the four winds.                                          

I stopped, looked out to sea and said out loud; 

“Jesse, above the smell of fish heads, dead bird carcasses and your own personal favourite: fox poo, you still smell of warm walnut.” 

And she did.