Nicola Harrison with a tale of how their adopted dog found his voice and was transformed from a bad boy, to a model terrier (she hopes)
One autumn day, a small black terrier called Tyke, who had spent four happy, undetected years killing anything he could, was finally caught in the act by a local farmer, who followed the trail of dead rabbits, pheasants and chickens back to his very own henhouse.
There was a phone call. And my brother Peter was summoned to the scene of the crime to find a small cowering dog being held at gunpoint. The farmer issued his sentence; death or banishment.
And so it was that Tyke the Terrible came to live in Sheffield. In the hope that the culture shock - no fields and an extreme lack of game - would bring him to heel at last.
"You've WHAT?" yelled the husband.
"I've offered Tyke a home."
"Yahoo," yelled my two sons.
But the husband was unmoved. "THAT psycho?" he bellowed. He'll upset Friday," - that's our own dog - "And you may as well say goodbye to Zadoc" - that's our budgie - "right now."
"Well," I said cheerfully, "He's only coming on trial. For a month. And if he misbehaves, we can always send him back."
Day 1
Tyke clings to my ankle, shivering with cold - its about 10 degrees colder up here - and howls mournfully every time I move out of sight. He practically genuflects whenever Friday enters the room. What a wimp!
But then I look into his eyes and see the awful intelligence gleaming there - an intelligence utterly devoid of moral light, and I have a sense that's he's just waiting to get his paws under the table ... and then he'll strike.
Day 4
Absolutely model behaviour. Tyke walks beautfiully to heel, copies everything faithful old Friday does, and never leaves my side. Unless he sees a cat - and then it's a different story. Teeth barred like needles, ears flat, a demonic flash of his eyes and he's off into the undergrowth in a frenzy of bloodcurdling snarls.
COME HERE! I shout into the next-door-neighbours garden, whose cat it is. I crash over the wall and make a grab for his collar. Too late! Tyke proceeds to charge in through the neighbour's cat flap and pee all over her hall curtains. Oh, the shame!
Still, at least he hasn't killed anything - yet.
Although we came pretty close to that this afternoon when a posse of six year olds feeding nuts to a squirrel witnessed Tyke in full attack mode, teeth snapping. For a moment I thought 20 youngsters were about to witness a brutal slaying and be emotionally scarred for life, but happily the squirrel escaped.
All the children stroked Tyke and said AH!
More Tyke
