All the dogs on our street when I was growing up had their full names.
Timmy Donnelly was a short-haired, short-tempered collie. Paddymac O’Kane was a full pedigree long haired collie who resembled a darker version of Lassie but who was so laidback, Timmy was going to have to get himself out of the well. Rock Reagan was a German Shepherd whose family used to be the landlords of a pub in London and lived upstairs from the shop. A big, loud, boisterous dog was a deterrent to anyone who thought of coming to rob the place. If dogs had accents, Rocky was a cockney.
Bruno MacBride was one of those dogs that breeders who give what they think is cute names to cross-breeds would have struggled to come up with a name for. No labradoodle or Cockapoo for us. Bruno was a bit like a border collie with a retriever coat and a beagle’s instinct. When I asked my Mammy what kind of dog he was, because even then children were hung-up on labels, she told me he was a Heinz and I confidently proclaimed to the whole of Killowen Drive that our Bruno was a full-bred Heinz. He was definitely the friendliest dog in the street.
Like most of my memories of my Daddy, I have snapshot images in my head of getting Bruno and bringing him home. As the youngest of the family, there were certain privileges I had because of the six and a half year gap between me and our Lughaidh. One of those privileges was that whilst the rest were in school, I would often get taken places with Daddy.
Daddy would have been partial to an occasional pint on his way home and one of the places he liked to call was to a pub in Newtownards called Rice’s.
Rice’s was just up the street from the square in Newtownards where the big Woolworth's was, the place where I was bought the doll who was almost as tall as me. It was also home to Caffola’s café where there would have been the odd ice cream consumed on the strict condition that I didn’t tell Mammy.
On a Saturday in Rice’s, Daddy would sit up at the bar with a copy of the Racing Post and pick one or two horses over a pint and one of the young fellas in the pub would go and put a bet on for him in the bookies. I’d spend my time with a damp cloth cleaning all the tables and getting paid 50p - a fortune - for my labours. Then Daddy would collect his winnings if there were any, call in the butcher’s for the meat for Sunday dinner and we’d dander home.
Daddy and the barman had an argument one December Saturday but even as a child I could tell it wasn’t really a fight, that it was more good-natured banter. The counter was lifted and I was called behind the bar with Daddy following, out a door with a low building to the right into a walled yard. In the top left corner of the yard there was a tea chest on its side, covered with a bit of carpet and inside was a black and white dog and her five puppies.
Once they saw people coming the puppies came waddling out to meet us and I was so excited to be getting to play with them. They were jumping up on me, chewing on my shoelaces and I was tickling their little pink hairless bellies. I don’t know if he was in a good mood because he’d won a couple of pounds on a horse or because it was coming up to Christmas, but Daddy then said the magic words “which one do you want?”
Well now, how do you make a choice like that? As it turned out it was easy. As four puppies jumped and yelped and vied for our attention, one stood just in front of Daddy, head up looking at him and slightly cocked to the side, tail wagging in the air, presenting himself as “the one” to be adopted.
I scooped him up in my arms and, with Daddy carrying the Sunday chicken, we made for home. But it was a long walk for wee legs and, mar is gnáth, somewhere along the way I had to be carried and the pup was deposited in the pocket of the big Crombie overcoat.
I was told to say nothing about the dog when we got home and that Daddy would tell Mammy, so when we came in the door, Daddy handed the chicken to one of the boys and took off his coat and hung it on the coat rack in the front hall and no sooner had he done so than Mammy screamed “Oh my God Frank, there’s a rat on the coat rack. You must have disturbed it when you hung up your coat, I can see it wriggling in there behind. Get it out!”
Rats were not an uncommon sight at the time as we were living in a half-built housing estate.
Daddy laughed and reached for the coat rack, dug into the pocket and produced the pup and said “he may look like a wee rat now, but he’s going to grow into a fine dog.”
I don’t recall who gave him the name Bruno, if it was Daddy or one of my brothers. I’d have called him something awful no doubt. But regardless who named him he was always my dog and after Daddy died, Bruno was my link to him and my snapshot memories of our wee days out.
A dog is for life, not just for Christmas. Please adopt, don’t shop and if you are thinking of getting a dog, wait until after Christmas. For as sure as Bruno MacBride was a full-bred Heinz, there will be 57 varieties waiting in shelters in January for their forever home.
