Friday 12th January 2024

Brotherly Chaos & Canine Mayhem

Friday. The day everyone secretly loves and secretly fears.

For me, it is a delicate balancing act between running a small dog empire and remembering that I occasionally belong to a family as well.

Today is Stan's birthday.

Which means dinner.

Now, before anyone from anywhere south of Watford gets confused, dinner in Yorkshire is the thing that most people call lunch. We have school dinners at lunchtime, Sunday dinner at lunchtime and, if someone says, “What are we having for dinner?”, there is every chance they mean roast beef at half past twelve.

Tea, meanwhile, is the evening meal, often eaten before the evening.  Unless it isn't.  Because afternoon tea is neither lunch nor tea in the Yorkshire sense, but an entirely separate event involving sandwiches so small they appear to have been prepared for dolls, scones and enough cake to put a Labrador into a medically significant coma, and generally involving a pot of tea, unless like you, you are a failing Yorkshire lass who hates tea!

Then there is supper, which is apparently something you have after tea if you are still hungry, although in our house supper generally means someone has found a packet of biscuits at 10pm and decided that digestive biscuits don't count as food if eaten while standing in the kitchen.

So today I have to organise my dog empire around Stan's birthday dinner.

At lunchtime.

Which means doing the morning dogs, sorting the afternoon dogs, checking who is where, who needs collecting, who has eaten something questionable and whether any of the team are likely to ring me with an emergency involving a missing key, a muddy dog or a client who has forgotten they booked a walk.

All before I am required to become a functioning member of society and sit down for a family meal.

This is harder than it sounds.

Dogs don't recognise birthdays.

Dogs do not look at the calendar and think, “Goodness, we'd better keep things calm today, Mum has family obligations.”

No.

The dogs wake up exactly as enthusiastic as they were yesterday.

Someone needs walking.

Someone needs feeding.

Someone has found fox poo.

Someone has developed a sudden and deeply concerning interest in the neighbour's wheelie bin.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Yorkshire, Stan is presumably preparing to age another year while I am standing in a field trying to untangle three leads and wondering whether I can get away with arriving at a birthday dinner smelling vaguely of wet Labrador.

The answer, of course, is probably yes.

This is Yorkshire.

Half the cafe will likely smell of wet dog, farm, engine oil or gravy anyway.

The good news: Friday is the quietest day in the dog-walking week. My team is holding the fort, which means I can disappear for a couple of hours without the entire canine population revolting.

The bad news: no one else seems to understand that lunchtime is prime dog chaos hour. Every booking, every text, every desperate request for a last-minute walk lands in my inbox like a hailstorm of small, insistent frogs.

I sip my coffee. I answer emails. I allocate dogs. I remind myself that I am in charge, even when everyone else thinks it’s optional.

By 12:30, I’m racing across the road to meet my brother. He was working from home today, which, frankly, is convenient. If he had to commute, he might notice how stressed I am. Today, he is blissfully unaware. He has plans tonight, which suits him, and conveniently, no one cares that I find these family lunches extremely difficult.

We sit down for dinner at my mum’s favourite cafe. It’s the usual: mild chaos disguised as conversation, a generous amount of sarcasm, and a very awkward attempt at birthday singing.

Meanwhile, in my head, I am secretly running a dog walking operation. Alice is probably plotting to steal someone’s roast potato. Nicolas is barking at a leaf in the corner of my mind. Shiva is calmly calculating which client dog is likely to pull a stunt mid-walk today. And somewhere, in a parallel universe, Clara is probably turning a lead into a rope and attempting to lasso a Labrador.

We eat. We laugh. My brother opens presents. One of them is something absurd and terrible from me, which is traditional and expected. He pretends, very badly, to love it, which is also traditional.

By 1:45, I am already thinking about my return to the trenches: walking difficult dogs, untangling leads, refereeing minor disagreements between two boxers who believe physics is optional. But for now… lunch is done. Birthday celebrated. Chaos contained (mostly).

Back home, I resume control. Dogs walked. Leads untangled. Emails answered. The usual.

And I make a note in the diary:

Today I survived brother’s birthday dinner. Dogs still alive. Chaos deferred.