ROVER THE BRAVE

Rover was a little brown pup, not much bigger than a mouse, with a black stripe of coarse fur that ran down the back of his head to the tip of his tail. As he grew bigger the stripe grew with him and eventually he had a noticeable ‘wave’ of darker fur all down the middle of his back.

By the time Rover was grown he was big, wider than a Labrador, longer than a German Shepherd and when he stood up on his back legs, he was taller than I was. He would put his front paws on my shoulders and lick my face in greeting when I had been away from home for more than five minutes.

He was a big softie of a dog, or so we thought. My sisters would play with him like he was a toy; it was not unusual to see him dressed up in various guises. He used to look out of the window wearing one of mum’s headscarves and a pair of sunglasses, but he was never dressed up in dad’s flat cap in the belief that he would catch ‘the bald germ’ from it and loose all his hair and go bald like dad. My sisters used to chase one another round with dad’s cap in an attempt to place it on the other’s head shouting, “You’ll get the bald germ!”

Rover knew his place, we didn’t know this at first, but Rover had worked out that he, and he alone, was the family’s protector. Rover’s territory was more or less the house and garden and once you knew that it was best that you didn’t forget it. The family, that’s to say those of us who lived in the house, Rover’s pack, had nothing to fear, on the contrary, we were under his protection. Anyone else took their life in their own hands if they entered Rover’s domain, as my aunt discovered on one fateful occasion.

In the early 1970s you could go out for a short while leaving your house unlocked without fear of burglary, it really was a different world back then, every house had a coin operated gas meter and you paid for gas as you used it by putting another shilling in the meter, every three months the ‘meter men’ would come around to empty the money out of the meter and they would count the shillings into ten shilling piles in the kitchen table. The amount that you owed for the gas was taken away and anything over was left on the table and went swiftly in to the purse of the lady of the house, who was then seen as an easy touch for any child in need of a few ‘spends’ for the week.

The gas money went into big leather bags that the meter men carried around with them and when the bags were full they were left at the end of the road for collection by a van that would go around the streets, picking up full bags and leaving an open empty one in its place.

This was the world I grew up in, people were assumed to be honest, and for the most part they were, so you could pop out to the shops and leave your doors unlocked without even thinking that anything bad was going to happen. So it was when my aunt popped in on after going to the post office. My aunt came in through the unlocked front door a few minutes after mum had gone out through the back door. My aunt came in and was greeted by a wagging tail and a slobbering dog. After fending off the dog she looked around for my mum and discovering that nobody was in, my aunt put her bag on the coffee table and sat down in one of the armchairs. All the time Rover was lying on the hearthrug with his tail still wagging. Fancying a cigarette, my aunt reached out for her bag on the coffee table, but before she had touched it there was a snarling face with its nose touching hers.

When my mum came home she discovered my aunt being ‘restrained’ in the corner by the dog, who, on seeing mum return, reverted to his normal friendly self, sat back on the rug wagging his tail as if nothing had happened.

I think that mum was the more scared of the two, having never seen this side of Rover’s nature. All my aunt had to say was that a dog like that was worth his keep; after all he was only doing his job.

It transpired that Rover was the kind of dog who would cheerfully let anyone into the house, but he wouldn’t let them out.