It's a dog's life.

Dogs. They are a part of the profession. Most of the families I have taught have had several of them. There have been times, when the mother has shouted up the stairs, at which it has been impossible to distinguish between the names of the children and the pets. I have had the pleasure of meeting a Samson, Algernon and Biggles in both dog and human form. The dogs have generally looked less inbred. 

These pedigree dogs all had below average IQs for their species but, even so, they all had more get up and go than the students and that's saying something considering the average dog spends most of the day eating and sleeping with perhaps a twenty minute break for rutting every piece of soft furnishing in the house. 

The dog, however, has often provided a useful insight into the psychological make up of the family I am working for. They are sponges for stress and are often as unruly as the kids. I have also seen pets terribly abused. I was not surprised to hear the news story this week of a boy at a Catholic boarding school skinning a live cat. I have seen a dog hit with a tennis ball after it refused to stop barking.

The only dog I have time for is a Golden Retriever and all the other dogs know it. We have a mutual disrespect. I have been knocked over by a Doberman, fondled by a Labrador, but the worst case involved poodles. 

I was teaching a seventeen-year-old A level student whose mother had two poodles. They yapped and fawned at me with their little paws. I came in one day and while I was waiting for the student to come downstairs the mother took me into the kitchen to make me some tea. The poodles followed. One started at my leg, so I gently nudged it away. But then the other lay down on it's back and the one who had just been at my leg began to fellate him. And I mean fellate. 

At that moment the student comes in and what did I do but point. 

'Look at those two.'

At which point the student let out a curdled kind of scream and kicked the fellator so hard it yelped. 

The mother turned but the dogs were now barking and running around half crazed and that's when I got bitten. I tried to calm it down. A little nip. The student looked at me mortified as did the mother but I shrugged it off. I'd had a tetanus booster recently and, to be honest, I would have been pissed off if I was that dog. 

Anyway, this is all to say, beware the dogs. Those poodles followed me everywhere and were always seeking attention when the mother was out and she was out a lot.They would whine and yelp all the time. They hated being left at home alone. I found out the student felt the same way. She was often at home by herself and only went to college a couple of days a week. Her father was away on work a lot and her sister was at uni. And I began to see that she treated the dogs with great resentment. After all, as pets go, poodles are pretty rotten company.