FIRST LOVE

FIRST LOVE

I know the TV is full of it and everyone is very blasé about it, but the truth of the matter is you can’t understand how it feels until it actually happens to you.  I’m nearly four year’s old, so maybe some of you will say I’m a late developer and perhaps you’re right, but that doesn’t alter the powerful nature of the experience.

About a week ago a little bitch came walking by my house.  I was lying in the shade minding my own business but something caught my attention and I sallied forth to greet this unexpected visitor.  When she went away, I couldn’t settle down again so I kept wandering back to the spot where I had seen her.  I looked all around but she was nowhere to be seen.  Then the next day and the next she came back again, and this time she managed to squeeze between the bars of our gate so I followed her all around my territory.  The chap next door, a fawn German shepherd cross, tried to get in on the act but she was in my patch and anyhow - and this is quite flattering - she paid no attention to him, so I didn’t have to get involved in a squabble over this matter which would have been quite undignified. Not that I’m too hot on dignity as a general rule but .... under the circumstances ....

After that, every morning she would squeeze through the gate and come and sit by me.  By this time my folks were getting pretty agitated.  You know how it is: they thought she wasn’t good enough for me although they agreed she was sweet. Sweet she was indeed and quite pretty too.  She was small and slim with a cinnamon-coloured coat and a sunny disposition.  One morning, just as I had won her over completely, out came my Mum and that sent the poor thing scurrying off.  She ran as fast as her legs would carry her and flattened herself to the ground so she could get out under the gate.  Funny how she always went out UNDER the gate when she could just as easily have squeezed through the bars.  

Anyway, for days I pined.  I didn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.  I prowled up and down the lounge the whole night through.  I tried to follow her but to no avail.  I explored the neighbour’s land which is accessible from mine but their fencing is just as unassailable as our own.  They took me for long walks to the beach and into town to try and take my mind off this unwise affair but, although I made an effort to please them, the image of that little brown beauty haunted me day and night.

Then after a few days she stopped coming around.  Sometimes I can hear her barking down by the road but I haven’t seen her again since.  In physical terms everything is the same as it always was before, but somehow the world has changed for me. I suppose this must be what in anthropology (or should I say “caninology”) they call “the passage to manhood”.

Simon