David Mitchell

This is a love story between a man and a dog.

Like most love stories, it involves cuddles, selfies, and love poems. It’s also cliched and predictable – just not predictable by me. About a year after we got Mango, our cocker spaniel, my wife got me a card that said,

There is no greater love than that between a man and the dog he didn’t want.

Before Mango, the closest we’d got to a pet was a frog. We were hanging about the pond down at Marshwiggle Way on the Connswater greenway. It was frog season, or something. There was a family there who were much more fun and interesting than us with containers to take little frogs home. The kids saw this and begged for us to get one too.

‘I’ll never be able to catch one,’ I said.

The dad of the other family overheard and came to offer us a frog.

‘Thanks but I’ve nothing to keep it in,’ I said.

‘Just put in that cup.’ I was holding an empty paper coffee cup.

In the frog went. I put the lid on and we walked home, frog in cup.     

We Googled ‘how to look after frogs’. It seemed you couldn’t just stick them in tap water. They’d die. I told the kids this: ‘Jumpy needs to go back to the wild where he belongs. He’ll be much happier there’.

So we walked all the way back to the bridge in Orangefield park, and dropped Jumpy into the river.

It was about this time that the kids’ lobbying for a dog started. The questions. The badgering. The essays. What might we name our dog, just in case we ever got one? I’d never had a dog in my life, nor had I been around any. It was a hard ‘no’.

I started to dread going to a beach or a park. They would see so many dogs and want one more. We’d go up to every dog and ask to stroke it. Afterwards I’d say, ‘Isn’t meeting a dog and stroking it for a few minutes basically like having your own dog?’

They said it wasn’t.

Why did I give in? I gave in because of Molly, my in-laws’ blue roan cocker spaniel, and a single movement of her head.

We were dog sitting, and she was beside me on the sofa, and for no reason at all other than that I was there, she stretched over and set her chin on my leg.

After that, my ‘Never, never, never!’ became, ‘Maybe, when we fix up the kitchen/when the lockdown is over/if we find the right dog’. The excuses ran out and next thing we knew we were all in the car driving to pick up our puppy.

It’s a brutal thing to see a bunch of puppies playing together and then to lift one and take it with you. It’s not made any better when the puppy whines all the way home in the car, all the rest of the day, and when you put it in its crate at bedtime, keeps whining.

After half an hour, I went downstairs and lay on some blankets on the floor beside the crate. Mango whined. I let him out. He jumped on top of me and immediately went to sleep.

I put him back in, and all was repeated. As long as he was in contact with me, he was content. Now and again, he’d lunge at my face with scratches and licks, which was a very odd and new and not entirely bad sensation.  

During the day, I’d be chopping vegetables, and he’d set his head on my shoe and go to sleep. Then I’d walk over to the sink, and he’d follow me and put his head on my shoe again and resume sleeping.

My standard line back then was ‘I like Mango but I still wish we didn’t have him.’ He stopped us doing things. He ruined our grass. He shredded my favourite hoody.

But gradually, I started to want to spend time with Mango. You know, quality time.

We’d go on little coffee dates. I’d sit outside a café, he’d want up on my knee, and we’d sit there until the pins and needles in my legs became unbearable. People would smile at this now pretty big dog, sitting up on his human’s knee, watching the world go by. 

I’d have to mark the moment with a selfie. I took so many selfies of Mango and me that iPhotos created one of those automatic and creepy slide shows. It was called ‘best friends’, showing us in various Belfast locations to a sentimental soundtrack.

In many of these photos, Mango and I look moody and pretentious, like we’re in a band photo for our experimental music project. We also look oddly similar. We’ve the same facial expression. Same fur.

Pretty soon I realised – I love all dogs! I started to spontaneously reach out to them as they passed on the street. I am not one for striking up a conversation, but I’ll shoot the breeze with anyone about our dogs.

And so, we were in Portrush one summer and as happens, we stopped to chat to another cocker spaniel owner. Mango and this other cocker sniffed and play-wrestled – more manically than usual, I thought. They looked so alike. We asked the age of this other dog. Then, tentatively, we then asked where this lady had got her cocker.

It turned out that Mango and his new friend, another Molly, were brother and sister. They hadn’t seen each other since the day we took him away. What a good-looking family.

As we walked on, was there a tear in my eye? I couldn’t possibly say.

Thankfully, this love story doesn’t end in tragedy. Mango is right here, sitting close to me as I type this on the sofa. Watching him like this has even moved me on a few occasions to write horrifyingly heartfelt poems about the pure devotion of a dog, about their lives of simple purpose and dependence. How remarkable to be recognised by a creature from another species. How good to feel the unconditional love of Dog.

But let’s not get carried away. You, Mango, don’t overthink. You just want to be wherever I am.

So wakey, wakey, my little silent friend. Time for a coffee and catch up.