When Snoopy was 9½ months old, I decided it was time to see if he was as smart as he thought he was. So I bought him a puzzle, designed to keep dogs occupied “for hours”. It took him all of ten minutes to move all eight covers and eat the treats hidden beneath them. His second attempt took barely five minutes. It was clear that I needed to invest in a more complicated puzzle if Snoopy was to be challenged.
In early April the nights turned cold. Even without the sound of heavy rain as an excuse, Snoopy sought,
and was granted, access to my bed in the early hours of the morning – usually about 5am – when he would snuggle up close to me under the duvet. It was very touching (excuse the pun), but I could only doze until I deemed it time for my early morning tea.
One morning I was lying in bed, quietly chuckling at my P.G.Wodehouse book, when I was reduced to a
paroxysm of laughter for which that supreme master of the English language wasn’t responsible. Instead it was the sight, perceived from the corner of my eye, of something long, thin and black waving at me, the
rest of its owner’s body hidden beneath the duvet.
The very next morning, Snoopy again distracted me from my book. In the corner of my bedroom are two
adjoining windows, one facing north and the other east. There were two kangaroos in my garden – only a
few metres apart but not both visible through the same window. Snoopy was sitting bolt upright at the foot of my bed, growling softly and constantly turning his head from one window to the other so as not to miss any untoward movement by either trespasser.
For many months, I had continued the practice of allowing Snoopy onto my bed every night, for a few
minutes of play – usually very energetic play – before I put him onto his own bed and got into mine. I’d
always allowed my previous dogs to sleep on my bed, and hoped to do the same with Snoopy once he’d
calmed down and would stay on the other side of the bed – which seemed a distant prospect. However, on one cold night in April, when I lifted him onto my bed, he showed no inclination to play, instead crawling under the duvet on the other side. And there he stayed, without moving, until I got up to make my tea in the morning. Was my puppy psychic?
Snoopy didn’t take long to convince me that the answer to that question was “No”. That evening I left him for over three hours to attend a concert in Berry. On my return I found my bedroom floor covered in scraps of thin black material – evidently torn from the lining of my bed base, which he hadn’t touched for many months. Perhaps he considered that vengeance for my absence was a greater priority than showing that he knows what I’d like him to do.
Snoopy’s next bed performance was even less entertaining. After a night and a day at the kennels he was
very tired, and a shower of rain also discouraged him from going outside before bedtime. Showing no
inclination to play, he slid under the duvet and went to sleep. At midnight he crawled out and jumped off
the bed. I raced to the laundry and opened the back door. It had stopped raining, but he didn’t go out.
Assuming it was a false alarm, I followed him back into the bedroom and lifted him onto the bed. I was so stunned by the sight of him squatting, that by the time I’d tossed him off the bed and grabbed a towel it was too late to stop a large pool soaking through the cover into my duvet.
I put the cover into the washing machine, squeezed the duvet into the dryer, put a sheet from my
wardrobe and the duvet from the spare room (where it was on the top shelf of the wardrobe, which meant I needed to get the little step ladder from the kitchen in order to reach it) onto my bed, and climbed in. As a result of all that activity, or perhaps the memory of it, it took me ages to get back to sleep. By contrast, Snoopy’s memory is evidently very poor, when it suits him. For a mere couple of hours later, he sought readmission to my bed. Needless to say it was refused.
At bedtime the following night I lifted Snoopy onto my bed, where all he wanted was to play – hard. So, not wishing to risk a repeat of the previous night’s misadventure, I put him on his own bed, where he remained until 6.30am, by which time I thought it safe to allow him to join me. He dutifully slid under the duvet, where he cuddled up cosily against me. But half an hour later I heard a sound from his throat which presaged only one outcome. So I threw back the duvet and pushed him off the bed. He duly threw up – mostly pieces of green rubber, clearly from the toy he’d been steadily demolishing in the couple of weeks since I’d bought it for him… to chew, not to eat.
Tony Barnett
