Arthur's Lost Weekend

When I was a younger version of me, I could easily go the odd night or two without much sleep. However, I can reliably inform you that is no longer the case, because nowadays, without at least 6 straight hours, my brain turns to fudge and I bumble around the house like I'm a drunk with jet lag.

Mr Tweddle likewise struggles. It would seem that we both have matured into two old farts who need at least some semblance of a sleep schedule to function.

“So what is the problem?” you might ask. “Why don’t you just sleep?” To which I might answer, “Bastards with fireworks still setting off fucking incendiaries to wake people up in the middle of the night are the problem!” And then, in an apologetic manner for being so gnarly, might add “Also, the weather’s been so bloody hot, it’s been tricky to even get to sleep.”

Anyway, as a result of our enforced insomnia, it’s all been a bit sluggish round Tweddley Manor this past week, and it’s not just Mark and I who’ve been affected: Fergus and Lachlan, who are both in summer break, are veering dangerously towards the nocturnal. The chickens are cranky. The rabbit is confused. Arthur is clingy, and the bees (or Audreys, as they’re known round here) are absolutely bloody furious.

A couple of days ago, Mark made the mistake of checking on how the butternut squash we’re growing in the backyard were getting on. In doing so, he interrupted a couple of Audreys that were busy with the business of being bees. Normally they'd just buzz off, but in their current state of ‘frankly raging’ they stung him a couple of times, and he had to retreat indoors sharpish. Not because he was stung - as he’s used to such things - but because one wee incandescent Audrey was completely out of control and dive bombing him from all angles.

Even after the patio doors were closed, she flew into the glass with admirable and persistent fury, believing that the harder she hit it, the more likely it would be to smash. She stayed there for a good twenty minutes, ramming her wee body into the doors with a determination way out weighing her actual physical abilities.

Mark, not wanting to piss her off any further, sat a distance away from the door listening for the thwack of her wee body against the glass. Fergus, on his way out to feed the rabbit, stood waiting for her to get bored and fly off. And I watched from the kitchen, expecting that any moment she would ram the door so hard, she’d knock herself out. Arthur, meanwhile, lay on the floor watching the whole thing like it was profoundly mesmeric.

To be fair though, Arthur has spent most of this week gazing at stuff like it’s profoundly mesmeric. As he reacts so badly to fireworks, he has for a great deal of time been completely off his face.

The only way to get Arthur through early July is to drug him. I don’t love doing it at all, but I also don’t love the sound of his bones rattling against the wooden floor because he is shaking so much in fear, and I don’t love the worry that the next firework, when it comes, will be the one that causes a heart attack. So drugs it is.

A dog trainer friend of ours told us that the best way to do it is to give the dog small amounts, evenly over time, and most importantly to start about three or four hours before the fireworks begin. This is because once a dog gets an adrenaline rush from fear, it takes around four hours to get them back to a regular level. So, basically, if I gave him a pill when he was already terrified, it would be pointless, and not give him any relief.

This new method has worked perfectly. I now give him a quarter of the pill at four-hour intervals throughout the day on the really bad days, and latterly, as the noise is thankfully wearing off, he might just get one single quarter on the days when it’s gnarly but not awful. In the end I’ve given him way less pills than last year, which is brilliant. But because of the way he is dosed, it literally feels like he’s been stoned for days.

So, he, like the rest of us, is bumbling around Tweddley Manor. Except he seems happy about it. He can’t even be bothered to raise a passing bark to his nemesis, the postman, but instead greets him with a friendly wag of the tail.

We’ve all often wondered what Arthur would sound like had he a human voice. Lachlan reckons he would have an English voice like something out of Downton Abbey. Mark reckons Bugs Bunny. Fergus reckons Clark Kent. As for me, I really can’t think of the sound of a voice for him, because he’s just, well, Arthur.

But struggling with the lack of regular sleep, and sitting at my desk trying desperately to come up with just a couple more paragraphs for a hard deadline, I looked across at Arthur, lounging so rapturously on his bed, and I did wonder that if his wee paws could type, what he might say about his life this week. Here’s what I came up with.

Fear and kibble at Tweddley Manor.

There’s a certain kind of panic that strikes hard just beneath the collar, when your ears sense that first far-off sound of artillery fire. It’s like the same kind of rush you get when you’re out for your walk and spot that Rottweiler (who’s supposed to be tame but tried to bite your head off once) in the distance. Your body freezes. Your bones shake. You want to take a poop, but you know you can’t. And so you run beneath the table, or under the bed, or somewhere at the very back of the closet, planning to never ever come out. But then you spot the cottage cheese. In the bowl. She put it there. Just for you.

Trust is a hell of a drug, and so apparently is whatever is in that cottage cheese, because before you know it, the world has gone soft at the edges, and everything looks cozy, and you don’t care about artillery, or Rottweilers, or even about that German Shepherd who keeps trying to sniff your ass, because you’re basking in the warm glow.

Just so you know, I do not endorse pharmaceutical intervention as a lifestyle. Each dog should feel his feelings. But still. There are times. Some dogs will tell you that fireworks don’t bother them. Those dogs are liars. Or Rottweilers. Or both. I am neither. I am Arthur. Now hand me that leftover crust of pizza.

Like I say, I haven’t slept much.

Anyway, I read this to Arthur. I can say he was much impressed. Though I can’t say he was unimpressed either. But then I read it to Mark, and it made him chuckle. In fact, it cheered him up so much, he ventured back out into the backyard to check on the butternut squash, and didn’t even get stung.

So maybe in the next day or so, by the time Arthur is completely free and clear of his medication, all will be back to normal here in Tweddley Manor. We’ll all finally have had a decent night’s sleep, and the Audreys will be civilized, the chickens will be regularly squawky, and the rabbit will return to plotting world domination.

And this whole past week of heat and noise and discontent will exist merely as the once fever dream of a short, podgy, gingery dog who could have been a great writer if only his paws would allow.

Lynn

Xo

PS: Please click the wee heart on this post to say you like it, and I will promise to tell Arthur - who, in the style of all renegade novelists, may or may not care.

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Arthur’s Lost Weekend - Audio