4 hours ago
1
My wife derives grim satisfaction from buying dog toys that advertise their indestructibility, and then watching as the dog destroys them, often within hours of their purchase.
“That came with a one-year guarantee,” she says, pointing to the fragments littering the rug.
“What was it?” I say.
“I can’t even remember now,” she says. “A lobster or something.”
The dog reduces heavy duty rubber bones to tiny pellets, and rope toys to threads. A lot of allegedly durable dog toys are made to resemble a dead animal – a squirrel, say, or a duck – with some kind of crinkly material inside that mimics the sound of small bones breaking. They’re clearly designed to be tortured at length, but the dog is only interested in their immediate dismemberment.
During her quest my wife accidentally discovers a straightforward dog ball with a squeaker in it. We have had many balls before, but this one is different: it squeals when you squeeze it, and it also squeals when you unsqueeze it. Instead of chewing it to bits, the dog alternates between applying and releasing pressure, eliciting the continuous piercing cry of a small mammal in distress.
“They’re only a pound each,” my wife says.
“What?” I say, over the awful squeal.
“It cost a pound!” she shouts.
“I bought seven of them.”
The scale of her mistake becomes apparent by the afternoon. The sound of the squeaking ball is maddening and constant – the dog never gets tired of it. If the dog is not making the ball squeak, then the dog is looking for the ball you’ve just hidden so that you can hold a conversation or watch television. And there are seven balls, so there is always one that’s rolled behind something, waiting to be discovered by a dog on a desperate, room-by-room search.
The next morning I come downstairs to find my wife at the kitchen table, operating on one of the balls with a darning needle.
“What are you doing?” I say.
“I’m murdering this fucking ball,” she says.
“I’m behind you one hundred percent,” I say.
“Actually I’m just trying to disable the squeak,” she says. “But I can’t really see what I’m doing.”
“Remember it squeaks both ways,” I say. “Like an accordion.”
“I’m aware of that,’ she says. “Wait. I think I’ve…” She squeezes the ball; nothing happens.
“Well done,” I say. The dog is called. The ball is thrown. Silence reigns for an hour, before the squeak manages somehow to repair itself.
Two days later the dog and I come home from a walk in the park and go straight up to my wife’s office.
“How did that go?” she says.
“Terrible,” I say. “This dog is obsessed with balls. She steals them from other dogs, or even their owners, and you can’t get them back.”
“I know,” my wife says. “Did you bring our ball?” she says.
“No,” I say. “I hate our ball.”
“I’m afraid you absolutely have to take our ball with you,” she says. “Every time.”
The next afternoon I take the dog for a long walk with one of the seven balls tucked carefully into my coat pocket so it won’t squeak. I’m reluctant to deploy it too soon, because once the ball is introduced the walk will be about nothing else but the ball.
Even when we walk by a man who is struggling to get his kite off the ground and the dog freezes in anticipation, I do not reach for the ball, preferring to talk my way out of the situation.
“Don’t do it,” I say. The dog looks at me, then at the kite, which flaps along the playing field like a wounded bird.
“No,” I say. “Come here.” The dog turns to follow me, reluctantly but obediently. And then it spies another dog chasing a ball in the distance.
“Ugh,” I say. “I thought dogs were supposed to have bad eyesight. Don’t even think about …”
But the dog is already racing off. Before I can think, it has covered half the ground between me, the faraway dog and its as yet unaware owner. I pull the ball from my pocket and squeeze it twice.
The dog does a sudden half-somersault, as if someone has jerked its invisible chain, and then comes haring back at me so fast I have to throw the ball away as a precaution against collision.
“It’s very powerful,” I tell my wife later. “Dangerous, but powerful.”
“I know,” she says. “Wait until you meet another dog with the same squeaky ball.”
“Other dogs have them?” I say.
“Everyone has them,” she says. “They’re a quid each.”
