It's a Dog's Life: A Litany of Horrors

As Halloween approaches Teddy ruminates on all things spooky and scary, as his human translator, Helen Stockton explains 

October is the month of ‘ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night’! This phrase comes from a Scottish prayer seeking protection from a range of fears, and is followed by the heartfelt entreaty, ‘Good Lord deliver us!’ 

Now when it comes to ‘ghoulies and ghosties’, we are keeping an open mind. ‘Her Indoors’ reckons she saw a ghost once, when she was a child, although I personally think it was most likely an over-active imagination and too much cheese. 

We dogs do that un-nerving thing, after dark, of suddenly hearing something that ‘Her Indoors’ cannot hear, pricking our ears, doing some low-level growling, and then, when we’ve worked ‘Her Indoors’ up to a suitable level of anxiety, barking. This is particularly effective when ‘Him Indoors’ has gone out and she’s home alone. 

And when it comes to ‘long-legged beasties’ ‘Her Indoors’ always thinks of spiders. Now ‘Her Indoors’ fear of spiders rises in a direct correlation with their size. Little ones are fine and medium sized ones are okay but the really big ones, that suddenly appear in houses in the autumn, are not welcome.

She doesn’t like to kill them, so she despatches ‘Him Indoors’ to ‘deliver us’ by catching them and releasing them into the wild. This usually involves putting an inverted jam jar over the offending creature and then sliding a piece of card under it until the spider is effectively contained. It then gets a rapid return to the less hospitable environment of the garden. 

The other night, we were on our way to bed when ‘Her Indoors’ discovered a large Arachnid which needed relocating before she could safely slumber. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find a spare jam jar but ‘Him Indoors’ remembered he had one in the garage. He went to get it but forgot that the door to the garage is alarmed and that he’d just set the alarm prior to bed. Pandemonium broke out with sirens and flashing lights. Anyway, by the time it was all sorted, the spider had gone. He’d probably released himself into the garden to escape all the commotion. 

And the ‘things that go bump in the night’ is easy; that’s us! We sleep in ‘Them Indoors’ bedroom although, with undue harshness in my opinion, we are made to sleep in our own beds rather than sharing that big, comfortable one in the middle of the room.

I tend to settle down and sleep soundly, whereas the apprentice, Bear, goes on little nocturnal wanderings which occasionally resultin ‘Them Indoors’ being disturbed by the odd ‘bump in the night’. Still, looking on the bright side, better a Bear than a ghostie – ‘Good Lord deliver us!’