Carol’s Column

It’s enough to make you ask what’s in a name

She arrived at our house big, black and exuberant, eyes wide and teeth flashing.

No, not Winnie Mandela.

Packaged in a silver box, a large round ball, she resembled a mobile Russian muff.

“This is your anniversary present,” said our delighted offspring. “We decided on something memorable and meaningful. Something that will make an indelible impression in your lives.”

Just then, the ball clambered out of the box and made her first impression on my honey-coloured carpet.

“What is it?” I inquired, my left nostril flaring as it does in time of stress.

“It’s a dog,” said my daughter. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

To commemorate our appreciation of her beauty, the object of our attention deposited another impression.

“Good heavens, that looks like an elephant dropping,” remarked my husband.

“She’s a six-week-old Alsatian,” said Jamie, “and she’s unique.”

True, this was the only fully grown six-week-old puppy I’d ever seen. Her feet were like lion pads and her tail had the power of a Sumo wrestler.

We named her Wombat as in combat as she chewed her way through nine takkies, a couch and a pair of binoculars.

A gentle-natured colossus, she licked everyone and everything and when I took her to the vet for her injections, she swallowed his stethoscope and would have gone for the syringe too had he not withdrawn it pretty sharply.

“This is not a small dog,” he said with understatement. “By the time she’s fully grown she will probably be the size of a horse, ha, ha.”

A horse? At three months, we changed her name to Charlie. Wombat did not seem a dignified name for a dog that could leap five metres and which, when in pursuit of ducks, could swim the width of the Zoo Lake with ease. At four months we re-named her Poubel, exotically French, which roughly translated means “rubbish”.

At five months, she began making strange neurotic sounds. We’d be eating breakfast and we’d hear agonised whining from the kitchen as she tried to break down the door.

“I think she’d like to join us,” said Nicky. So we laid a place at the table and she behaved quite well really, if you discount the fact that she never mastered a knife and fork. She was, I suppose, just like one of the kids. At six months, she was taller than my husband in crouching position — my husband not the dog — her hair had grown and we re-named her Garbo after Greta who exited to higher plains.

“Gosh, that Garbo’s an attractive lass,” remarked my mother-in-law, one evening, “whose girlfriend is she?”

Then suddenly, Garbo developed an insatiable desire for garbage bins. A collector by nature, she brought them home, stacked them on the front lawn, and digested the contents. My husband was not happy.

“Either she is trained, or she goes,” he said emphatically. “This house is not big enough for me, a neurotic dog and 17 garbage bins.”

Which is why, Cleo and I — did I mention we’d changed her name to Cleo after Cleopatra because of her majestic stature — found ourselves at a dog training session at the Zoo Lake on Sunday morning.

I cannot say her first lesson was an unmitigated success. She was ravished by a hound called Rambo or was it Bozo? And in retaliation tried to eat a small extremely well-behaved mutt named Woolfie.

We were sitting down to lunch, when a local restaurateur phoned. “We are in possession of a giant dog which has your number on its tag,” he said.

“Great,” I replied, “I’ll come and fetch her immediately.”

“Please bring R173,40,” said the voice. “She is sitting at the table and has just eaten six dozen oysters.”

“I don’t believe this,” muttered my husband as we set off to fetch her. “I suppose she drinks French champagne too,” he added.

“No, but she does enjoy a dop of Tassenberg,” I murmured.

Cleo is a dog of discernment, for what could be better than oysters and Tassies on a Sunday afternoon?

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