I thought breathing exercises were only for during childbirth

I made an exception to my “no guests” rule and agreed to share the house for two weeks with a loved one whose family are headed off on holiday. This may turn out to be a serious error, writes Terry Prone.

The anxiety dreams started immediately. In the first one, I got found out as not having Garda clearance, which, let’s be upfront about it, I don’t. In the second one, the guest was looking at me in silent reproach because I had offered him a favourite old paperback, Angus Wilson, to read, and he’s clearly way too straight to enjoy it.

Since the guest is a golden retriever, you can see, from the irrelevance of these nightmares, how nervous I am. It’s not that he’s a big dog, although he is big enough to compete in the Shetland Pony section of the Dublin Horse Show.

It’s not that he’s an aggressive dog, because he is pacific in the extreme, despite a bark that reminds me of the David Hanly days on Morning Ireland. It’s just that he’s a dog, and the species are strangers to me. The only one I ever got up close and personal with was a big black lab who used to greet me when I came off the school bus by leaping up, putting his two paws on my shoulders, and licking me with terrifying enthusiasm. I’ve often wondered if owning the most licked face in the neighbourhood was what allowed me to escape adolescent acne.

The golden retriever of which I now have custody was handed over by his owners with enough equipment to permit the running of a small circus. A sack of food, for starters, closely followed by thousands of doggy-doo bags. Well, OK, maybe only hundreds, but sufficient for each day’s output. My friend did a quick demo: You pull out the bag, put your hand in it, pick up the offending matter, turn the bag inside out, tie its little ears together, and bin it. She then sang a little song which seemed to have a chorus about any bin being fine. This seemed to derive from an ad to which I had never paid any attention. Well, come on, I don’t pay attention to Viagra ads, either. The doggy doo ads should be presented by BGE’s Tommy McAnairy. Then I’d be familiar with them.

“How do I not throw up from the smell?” I asked.

“Breathe out while picking it up,” was the crisp answer. I thought it was only for childbearing that they gave you breathing lessons, not dog-minding.

Next item was a purple yoke that had the look of something recently dug out of a pre-historic archeological site. Both owners became improbably enthusiastic about the purple yoke, which had a hole at each end. If I filled it with treats (gesture towards the bag lodged beside the sack of food) and maybe bits of a banana and stuck it in the freezer for a few hours, it would make the golden retriever ecstatic and keep him occupied for hours trying to get the frozen goodies out of it.

After the purple artefact came three net bags of tennis balls and a ball thrower. If I didn’t feel up to walking the dog, any day, I could give him his exercise by throwing the ball using the yellow throwing device, which would send it for miles. Then came the caveat: Towards the end of any exercise, I was to watch the dog closely and stop if I noticed him limping because he has an arthritic elbow. Which makes two of us.

Finally came a silvery whistle emitting so harsh a shrill scream it would turn your brain cells into box springs. This, I was guaranteed, would always bring him back from wherever he’d got to, in the unlikely event of him wandering away from me. As I hung the whistle around my neck, like a learner traffic cop, I was told the dog was not to eat chocolate.

Now, the cats are not to eat onions, which is no problem because I am in permanent onion-avoidance, but chocolate is an ever-present comfort. No shelf in my house lacks a chocolate bar. How could they leave their beloved dog in such a dangerous location?

While I was taking these instructions under advisement, the dog got enthusiastic about the prospect of playing with the two resident cats, who rejected him with heavy losses.

He came back looking sad. That’s the awful thing about dogs. They have expressions. Their eyebrows move and all. Cats have completely blank faces. They will do figures-of-eight in and out of your lower legs while purring like helicopters, but their faces will be exactly the same as when you offer them discount food.

Happy and furious are the same, as far as feline expression goes. The hissing and advanced claws are a good substitute for facial mobility, though.

The first night, I slept on the couch downstairs, lest the dog be lonely. During that night, he being a retriever, he retrieved a lot of stuff and brought it to me.

The loot included three bags of jelly babies belonging to the man in my life, two remote controls (ditto), a rubber glove, a cushion, a leather boot (only mildly chewed), and a blanket. That was when I realised I needed to do a tour of the house putting everything up high. Particularly the chocolate.

Once the house was sorted, it was time to do the ball-throwing, which I did until I figured he was exausted, at which point we headed back to the house for a sit-down. Or I did.

At some point he disappeared and although I used the whistle often enough to provoke restraining orders from the neighbours, (bearing in mind that this was six in the morning,) the dog failed to reappear.

The anxiety dreams were nothing, compared with this reality. I had the dog in a black maria. I had the dog impounded by PAWS, giving evidence against me of negligence and cat-contempt. I had the dog kidnapped.

I got out the binoculars and scanned the horizon from a high point. All became clear. The golden retriever was in the sea, swimming purposefully for Lambay.

I couldn’t explain to him that Lord Revelstoke requires visitors to book in advance and come by ferry. Then the seagulls evinced interest in this pale swimmer, and I was sure the Kerry sheep would be in the ha’penny place to a golden retriever dive-bombed by a gull.

As it turned out, these seagulls served Lord Revelstoke as airborne bouncers, because the dog did a U-turn and swam the couple of kilometres back, lashing up the beach to me as if he thought he’d made my day.

Just as the Chinese talk of the year of the snake or the year of the toad, this has become for me the summer of the dog.

I may not survive it.

That’s the awful thing about dogs. They have expressions. Their eyebrows move and all