Changes in well-known roads
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How Wan-Wan picks her route for her daily walk
WHEN I take Wan-Wan, my poodle pup, out for her daily walk, I usually let her decide where she wants to go.
She makes her choices, I think, depending on her nose first, then her ears, and last of all, her eyes.
Some smells are more interesting than others, probably based on which dogs have been there before her. She’s particularly attracted to smells of dogs she knows well, such as the little beagle and his friend, a poodle mix, who live nearby.
Their owner takes the boys out for walks twice a day, ample opportunity to decorate tyres and plants. Wan likes these two a lot, and even if she doesn’t have the chance to meet them face-to-face, the smells they leave behind are, for her, a welcome “Hello!”
Then the two of us come to a four-corner junction in the soi. We can go straight, to the left or to the right, but she never turns right, where that soi takes us past the gates guarded by packs of very large dogs.
They throw themselves against the gates, howling as in “I’m going to get you, and your little dog too!”
The dogs can’t get out, but their howling has upset Wan so much in previous wanderings that she avoids that soi entirely. Even if I carry her, she’s stressed.
Wan, though, can surprise me. If she chooses to go straight, she has to pass a house with two other unfriendly dogs, a basset hound and a terrier mix. At one time, their fierce attacks frightened her so badly that she refused to pass their house unless I carried her.
Then slowly she learned that these two dogs are now always kept inside and that there’s nothing to be afraid of. With licks and wiggles, she tells me that she doesn’t need to be carried, and then, on the ground, she ignores their threats, simply going about smelling tyres and weeds.
Sometimes, at the junction, she decides to turn left. This soi takes her past a house full of cats, all lying in the afternoon sun near their home.
Wan would love to play with them, but these kids aren’t dog-friendly. Being larger than Wan, they’d rather use some well-placed claws. Luckily, Wan has learned that ignoring them is the best defence.
This soi takes us past another house, the home of a 20-year-old poodle-mix. At one time, Wan and the boy would play briefly, but as the boy grew older, he became less friendly.
Who could blame him? Gradually growing blind from cataracts, probably deaf from old age, he could rely only on his nose, but Wan’s playful nose-touching confused him.
Over the years, the boy has grown increasingly frail, walking painfully on his leash. Gradually, he’s stopped taking walks, but he still likes to go outside.
He sits beside his owner, holding his nose high to catch scents that waft by, although he no longer recognises Wan.
Then, one day, we see him lying on the ground by his owner. “He can’t sit up, but he wants to,” his owner tells me. She has tears in her eyes.
The dog cries out in frustration, not understanding his weakness.
When we drop by the next day, the owner is waiting for us. “He’s gone. He died during the night,” she says. Her quiet tears are still in her eyes.
“My daughter wants to give me a puppy, but I don’t want to go through this again,” she says. “It’s too painful when your dog dies.”
She leans over to pat Wan, but we know that we will not be meeting her again sitting outside her house. Wan may not understand, but our daily walk has been changed.
