Orphée

Arnaud owns a dog called Orphée. Though pronounced in French, this word is even more beautiful than the English Orpheus, it seems like an add choice for a female dog. But Orpheus is more famous for being a lover than being a man – and true to her lupine nature, Orphée’s entire being and character is determined by the almost obscene amount of love and devotion that she has for Aranud, who adores her almost as much as she does him.

Believe me Katya, the love of Orphée is far better than the love of any man! He assured me before he left for the Alps, with her hemp leash and the responsibility of guardianship left temporarily in my hands.

Orphée is a black Labrador. She is slightly over-weight and her pelt is streaked with grey fur, for she is an old dog and no longer as fit as she once was. Arnaud could not explain the origin of her name as he did not name her. He acquired her from her former owners, who, I believe lived in a squat in Montpellier, a city in which Arnaud allowed himself the luxury of spending 8 years completing his undergraduate and masters degrees in oceanography. Though I have not spent much time in Montpellier, I can imagine ‘the scene’ is not so different from Toulouse, a city I am a little more familiar with. There it was commonplace for drop-outs, ferals and hippies to roam and stalk the streets or sit along the river bank with dogs at their side. I imagine Orpheus was of this pedigree, for she is very urban and city-trained and happily waits outside shops without a leash on, or sits by your feet when you take a coffee in a café.

Before this year I had never had either a cat or a dog, now I have – or at least co-own – both.  My cat, poor Behemoth, is still in London and probably sanctimoniously enjoying the bourgeois life of a boat-turned-house cat. I can imagine her now sitting picturesquely among the bower of pink roses that Harry has trailing above his garden flat in Kentish town. I have been an on-off vegetarian for many years, for reasons that became increasingly complex, but Behemoth was the first animal that I really loved as an adult. Though she was unpredictable, restless and vain, she adored human company and was a true companion to me in long, cold winter nights alone on the boat, or when Harry left to study in Sheffield. I loved – I love that cat – and would often be prefer to spend a Friday night with her on water, mesmerized and seduced by her indefinite number of charms, than out on the street drinking with friends.

Orphée is not at all like Behemoth. Behemoth was at core both wild and unpredictable, while Orphée is the most plodding earnest creature that you can imagine. However, looks can be deceiving. Though she is not as mobile as she used to be, Orphee is still a large dog with a wolfy expression, she often alarms those we pass on the street, especially when she is ‘untied’.

When I first met Arnaud and we walked Orphée for the first time around the meandering rivers of Ghent’s city centre, he began to talk of the many laws and regulations governing dog ownership and pet exercise in Ghent. He complained bitterly of the fact that the government had criminalised walking dogs without a leash, and that he hated ‘putting her on a lead’. If caught by a police officer, you can face an on-the-spot fine of ninety euros, and he told me that it almost happened to him once.

Though I was impressed at the absolute obedience that Orphée showed Arnaud, even without a lead, at the time I found it difficult to truly relate to what Arnaud was saying. Indeed, to the uninitiated there doesn’t seem to be much difference between walking a dog with or without a lead.

However, in the 8 days in which care for the dog has become my responsibility, I have begun to understand what Arnaud was talking about. For a dog of her size and physical condition, Orphee needs to be walked at least twice a day, in the morning and evening, she needs to be fed and watered regularly, and her waste needs to be disposed of properly.  Since these outings are often rather long or should be, ,the difference between walking a dog with or without a lead is experientially vast. Without a lead, Orphée is free to sniff about and choose to walk at my pace or caper on to make discoveries of her own. I merely need to enunciate some French imperatives that Arnaud taught me in an authoritarian voice (“Assiz!”, “Au Pied!”), and she comes scampering up to feet, or sits politely on the ground waiting for me to complete my shopping errand. With a lead on, she is no longer free, but by extension, inevitably, neither am I. Both of us become aware of our mutual and maybe even absurd, enslavement to each other; and the dog no longer feels like an outdoors companion but a partner in performing futile circuits of the city centre. Suddenly the pleasure of dog ownership becomes a burden and habits mere drudgery.

It was Beckett, first of all I believe, who alerted me to the sickening, deadening effects of routine: destroyer of true human life. What was is that Beckett said? It is what chains the dog to its vomit.

In order to avoid the corrosive effects of feeling enslaved to the dog’s needs of care, and in order for her to avoid feeling enslaved to me, I try to avoid putting her on the leash as much as possible. I learnt quickly that performing a regular ‘walk’ leads quickly to tedium, and so as much as I can I try to integrate our walks with the organic fabric of my life here and my natural love of exploration. So many days this week, we have set off for a day together in no particular direction, looking to all intents and purposes to passersby like a ‘little girl lost’, strangely English, with her pet black wolf.

At the time, I took up this charge of hers without thinking: but I have come to realise how much of a responsibility of time and love good dog ownership really is. After-all routine walks around the block can sometimes be monotonous and lonely, and as I discovered, you always have a reason to go back to your house, a good reason, because if you have neglected to feed her or exercise her, you have become a brute, a tyrant, and for a dog that lives in an apartment without a garden, she has little else to look forward to each day. It is true then, in a sense, what someone said to me in the pub: the world of dog ownership can be a very lonely one. Of course this runs counter to the common romance about owning a dog: a dog is man’s best friend: and the corollary of all these myths — that with a dog you can never feel truly alone.

But I have found the opposite to be true. Even in a dog-friendly city like Ghent, there are a surprising number of places that you cannot go to if you have a dog, and things you cannot do. You may sit and drink and smoke in a café terrace, but that’s about it. Many members of the public treat you with suspicion, most children with fear and even around other dog owners you must be cautious as you never can be quite sure how they will react to each other. In other words, owning a dog especially because of the diurnal circuit of dog-walking and needing to return to your home each night, is necessarily ostracizing. I suppose which end of the paradox you occupy depends very much on your lifestyle. Many people possess dogs to compensate for a real or imaged lack of intimacy and love in their own lives. In this case dog-ownership would definitely make you feel less lonely: if only for the amount of dog-related labour that you suddenly have placed in your hands. But if you have a full social dairy – well you might quickly discover that it is difficult to juggle these responsibilities simultaneously.

Noble, good Orphee, I do love her and pity her her real lack of freedom. But my conclusion is that the very profound responsibility of dog ownership is not one that I would take upon my hands for a very long time. As I write these words, I am looking down at her now, arrayed like a little black sausage upon the wooden floorboards of the Kleine Kunst. She is yapping and snapping away at a little fly that performs teasing pirouettes above her head.