Tea and Dog Biscuits by Barrie Hawkins Page A

asked.
    Charlie took a biscuit and broke it in two, dropping crumbs down his tunic.
    â€˜We’re only supposed to take them up to eighteen months but if one of the lads comes across a nice one we often shave something off their mileage. My last boy, Digby, he was three when I took him. Not that you’d have known it.’ He paused. ‘That boy out there reminds me of him a bit. In fact, more than a bit.’
    He looked away from the rest of us to stare at his teacup. His mood had changed suddenly.
    â€˜Fancy them not giving him a name,’ he said quietly, more to himself. But the rest of us also paused to reflect on that.
    Cecilia broke the sombre silence. ‘We were talking about poo before you came in, PC Morecambe.’
    â€˜Oh yes, as you do. Call me Charlie – I’m not on duty now.’
    Dorothy turned to him. ‘We were talking about how much of our time we spend looking at their motions, as it tells you quite a lot, doesn’t it?’
    Charlie nodded and forced a smile. Then he turned to me. ‘What are you going to call him?’
    I looked across at Dorothy. ‘We did talk about it while we were bathing him, didn’t we? We came up with quite a lot of names but there was nothing we really liked.’
    â€˜It’s hard, isn’t it?’ said Cecilia. ‘I’ve had to do it with strays.’ She looked at Charlie. ‘My husband’s a museum curator and loves history. He always wants to call them after famous people from the past. He wanted to call a Yorkie Churchill.’
    â€˜Barrie and I couldn’t agree on a name,’ said Dorothy. ‘Everything I came up with he pulled a face.’
    â€˜Well, you didn’t like any of mine,’ I said in my defence.
    â€˜What about Digby?’ said Charlie.
    This produced a pause.
    Dorothy and I looked at each other across the kitchen table.
    â€˜Perfect,’ she said.
    It had been Dorothy’s suggestion that we should hold a naming ceremony.
    â€˜I don’t think we should just start calling him by a new name,’ she had said. ‘This marks a new beginning for him – the start of his new life. A new name for a new life. We should do something to signify that.’
    A naming ceremony? At first I was rather unsure. Then I could see the idea was typical of Dorothy: a thoughtful suggestion, something nice to do, rather different, probably not an idea most people would have thought of.
    Cecilia was a maverick character and the more I saw of Charlie the more I began to suspect he was too. In keeping with their characters they both greeted Dorothy’s suggestion with enthusiasm.
    Thus it was that we four had adjourned to the lounge, a slightly more dignified setting than the kitchen. Lion-Maned Dog had been released from his temporary pen in the utility room, had strode into the lounge as if he owned the place and with his tail immediately knocked the remote control off the arm of the settee onto the floor, batteries spilling out the back.
    â€˜Now there’s a German Shepherd trait,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s clumsy.’
    Other items would be at risk from a clumsy big tail-wagging dog. While I moved these to a place of safety, Dorothy found pen and paper and came up with the wording for our short ceremony. I liked what she had written. ‘Who’s going to make the pronouncement?’ I asked.
    Dorothy looked across at me. ‘We haven’t got the authority to do this sort of thing – I think Charlie should do it,’ she said, turning to him.
    Surprise registered on Charlie’s face. He hesitated before speaking. ‘No, it was you three who rescued him. It should be one of you.’
    But I studied his face and I thought Charlie was rather pleased at the suggestion. I looked at Dorothy and then at Cecilia. ‘Let’s have a show of hands,’ I said. ‘All those in favour.’
    Three hands shot up in the air. Charlie