Shooting and fishing: Toast to Crumpet

Published on Thursday 23 October 2008 12:11

Crumpet is now five months old and I am beginning to feel we are reaching a critical point in our relationship.

Crumpet is a working cocker spaniel, so named because she is a warm, toasty, pale crumpetty colour. I am beginning to regret the name as everyone guffaws about "Al's bit of crumpet" as if it's the most original bon mot ever invented. But there you go.

Perhaps we should have stuck to my first choice, which was Shargar, an old word for the runt of a litter, which she was. That would have given everyone something else to guffaw about. But Crumpet it is.

Now the first thing about cockers, I think, is that they are, if not bonkers, then certainly very lively. And as someone observed they spend most of their life going round in circles two foot off the ground.

We have never had a spaniel before. I don't think either of our families have. All our dogs have been amiably laid back. My wife's side always had golden retrievers, and my lot went for rather mongrelly golden labs, although we once had an Aberdeenshire terrier called Jock which ate all my great aunt's black Peking bantams and had to be sent home in disgrace on the train in a crate with a dead bantam round his neck – which he couldn't have cared less about.

Our current golden retriever, Mango, is very beautiful but nervy and really doesn't like shooting and is inclined to run away or get under your feet as birds flush and fur flies. It's not really fair on either of us, not helped by the fact it was probably my fault in the first place that she is a bit hopeless with a gun. Otherwise she's a very nice doggie.

So when Crumpet appeared, performing somersaults and back flips as spaniels do, for my birthday, I made a sort of mental note that this time I was really going to have to concentrate and buy all the books about training gun dogs, and get a decent whistle. The only one I can find is called, I think, an Acme and has a pea in it and belonged to my father-in-law, a schoolmaster, who used it to referee football matches.

So far Crumpet and I have "bonded" extremely well. We roll about on the floor and scamper through the rhodies after tennis balls and cuddle up on the sofa in front of EastEnders. She will sit, usually, when asked.

She obviously has a good nose. She tears about like a demented Hoover when out for a walk, with her nose stuck to the ground, and she has put up several cock pheasants, which dear old Mango hasn't even sniffed at. She isn't running too far ahead because she is so busy zig zagging every inch of ground. But she has a serious propensity for charging off after crows in the far distance while "giving tongue". We have had to have one very severe talking to about chasing sheep, and I think (hope) we are on top of that one.

But I get the distinct impression these last few days that she is becoming something of a little madam. She is beginning to toss her pretty little head, take off through the cat flap without so much as a by your leave and is showing signs of what used to be called "kicking over the traces". Crumpet the strumpet. The time for a new whistle may be upon us.

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