Dog's Best Friend

Sometimes heroes wear tracksuit bottoms and an anorak. 

I'm on my way back from my Pilates class, when I bump into my friend, Lesley. I always like meeting people I haven't seen for a long time when there's no lag, no awkwardness, and you can just slip cleanly back into the rhythm. I haven't seen her for well over a year, but we chat as if it had been yesterday, mainly slagging off the fashions of young people. Fair play, young people. With your mullets, moustaches, sleeves of tattoos, gym-sculpted bodies and Simon-Bates-metal-rim specs, you've found that sartorial sweet-spot, so elegantly calibrated to offend me. It almost makes me proud. We post-punk jumble-dippers, with our ratted-up hair and dead men's coats, our flicks of kohl and perforated Levis, we thought we were it. We'd seen punk - what else can you show us? How can you offend us?

Oh. Okay, yeah. Very good. You got me. You look terrible. As Ian Faith from Spinal Tap would say "You look like an Australian's nightmare,"

We were chewing the fat over these fashion foibles, when I saw a shadow flit past Lesley's shoulder. A large black dog had just trotted over the Newtownards Road and wandered into someone's driveway. Now, normally when I see a black dog, I have a bit of a lie down with a cool pillow over my eyes, but I was fairly sure this one was real.

"Did you see that?" I said.

"See what?" said Lesley.

"A big black dog just ran across the road. I can't see an owner anywhere."

"No," she said accurately, as she had her back to the scenario.

"Oh, there it is."

The dog emerged from the driveway, and started padding along the pavement towards us. Lesley turned in time to see it stop sniffing the curb and step directly into traffic. The Newtownards is a busy arterial road, and this was rush hour and dark, and the dog was black. Lesley screamed, as a guy on a scooter swerved and stopped, and the bus behind him slammed on the brakes with a hydraulic whine. The dog, by some miracle, made it to the other side of the road, and was into someone else's driveway. The bus driver drove on, swearing from his his cab window. The scooter bloke, clearly rattled, asked, "Is that your dog?" No, we replied.

"Christ, the only thing I saw was the reflective strip on its collar. Is it okay?" We agreed it was okay, and he drove off again, quite slowly, just in case.

On the far side of the road the dog had emerged from the garden it had been investigating, and was back on the pavement. We couldn't believe the lack of common-sense it had shown. It just stepped into traffic. The idiot had no concept of being run-over, and would clearly do it again, should it suddenly have urgent business on the opposite side of the street, and it did seem to have something of a "grass is always greener" mind-set. It was incredible it wasn't dead - it had already crossed the road twice in heavy traffic, but I feared that three would not be the charm. I knew it had a collar - it wasn't a stray - so it would probably be friendly, if I could only get to the other side of the road before it threw itself under a bus.

The traffic was relentless. The nearest crossing point was five minutes away. Suddenly there was a gap in the traffic, and I hurled myself into it, running like a man who'd been working on his core for an hour. I made it to the other side of the road, past the beeping traffic, and grabbed the fool dog by the collar and into a hedge, as far from the curb as possible, Lesley close behind me.

There's a name on the collar. "Penny". Bad Penny. There's a phone number too, but Lesley hasn't got her glasses, and I've got the wrong contact lenses in and it's dark, so neither of us can read it. Scuppered by middle-age again. Luckily, a young couple appear and get involved. Their youthful eyes work, and soon Lesley is phoning the owner who is both in and nearby. (I work out from her address, that Penny has crossed the road, in the dark, at rush hour, at least three times. Lucky Penny).

The owner arrives, jittery and thankful, explaining the dog escaped either because builders had removed a fence, or her children let her out, and she takes, Penny, whose collar I'm still holding, and who has been squirming to get back and play with the traffic - a dog with a death-wish - away. I say goodbye to the young people and Lesley, and we all go home.

I think about how nice everyone's been: the young people, the scooter guy, Lesley, even me, for a change. Normally, I don't like people - I'd just been shopping in M&S*, after all, and subject to the usual iniquities that shop supplies (see other rants). But here everyone had been delightful, helpful, kind, even brave. Is this dogs? Is this what dogs do? Even suicidal ones? Is this the dog effect?

On the way back, I think perhaps I should have been stern with that dog owner. She was very vague about why her dog was loose, and hadn't even noticed she was gone. If Lesley and I hadn't been there, we could have been looking at carnage, a low-budget version of the end of An American Werewolf In London.**

But I was glad I wasn't. She was so pleased to have poor, depressed Penny back, and everyone else had been so cool. So, just this once, I decided I wouldn't be a dick.

*I leapt into traffic with a carrier bag containing two eclairs, a sourdough, a packet of Percy Pigs and a "Best Ever Moussaka". The hero's portion.

**Spoiler.