(set on't Yorkshire Moors, with a hint of Royston Vasey)
All About the Dogs
Eight years being the time since my partner, Geoffrey, vanished,
I’ve decided to have him declared dead. I’m told you can do it, as nobody’s
heard from him for more than seven years.
Three weeks after his vanishing, I’d been to police and
reported him missing, because I were worried. I weren’t actually much worried
about Geoff. I were more concerned for the dogs, all three being a bit under
the weather after something they’d eaten up on the moor and I weren’t sure how
much the vet’s bill would be.
Me and Geoff had chosen the three dogs for their wild looks.
Mackeson's a brownish border collier crossed with god knows what, he's powerful
jaws for a collie. Spitz is a big boy, looking like a huge, grey, shaggy bear
with great long legs and a curling tail. Geoff said he could be a shih tzu
great Dane cross, but I think he were joking. I always reckoned that would be physically impossible,
Spitz must be something like a wolfhound and mountain dog cross. The third dog,
Delilah, has massive black curls and fetches half the moorland home tangled in them.
She's possibly a giant cockapoo, if you look at her through squinting eyes.
They were all rescues, of course, Spitz being the oldest. The
vet reckons he’s now about eleven, which he says is a good age for such a large
dog. The others were half-grown pups when we got them a year or so before
Geoff’s disappearance. We’d agreed Spitz needed company especially as we were
both out working, he’d been a bit destructive, demolishing shoes, doors, two sofas
and a stray cat, we’d found that half eaten in the front garden. Of course
Geoff were soft on the dogs, he insisted on blaming foxes. Some people might
have believed him, but I knew who’d come in with cat’s tail in his mouth.
Geoff loved to walk with all three dogs on his free days.
Summer or winter, they’d all ramble for miles on the moors and if we were
lucky, Geoff would come home with a few rabbits or game birds in his kitbag. Once he arrived
with a lamb in the bag, he said Spitz had only spooked it and made
it run, he wasn’t deliberately hunting it. Geoff was in denial.
