From the editor - August 09 |
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Mostly, dogs and I don’t get on. A bit like computers and me. The best I can hope for is a fractious relationship with the dogs in my life. Same with computers, including my laptop as it crashes and gobbles my words on this very wet Sunday morning. They say that a dog is man’s best friend. But it is certainly not this girl’s best friend. I draw your attention to the well-known fact that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Now there is a splendid piece of wisdom.
Since the dratted laptop is misbehaving and it is too early to wake the IT department, who is normally more than helpful but is (as it is only midday) upstairs sleeping off an overnight computer-gaming tournament, I will head off into the rain to walk McDuff. McDuff is a large, smelly golden retriever without any notion of his own shortcomings. He thinks he is adored by all and he loves everyone. He is my sister’s dog and, as she is away for the weekend, our household is dog-sitting McDuff.
Yesterday a pair of nine-year-old boys was wrenched asunder from their computers to walk McDuff with me. The noise was horrible. Putting out their eyes with burning tapers would have been less painful to them. Laptops are a boy’s best friends, I think. How come they can’t tie their shoelaces or hang up their bath towels but they can master those laptops?
As McDuff gambolled with unrestrained joy at being taken for a walk, dragging both boys behind him at speed as they hung grimly on to the lead, I realised something that – shamefully – had eluded me before. Dogs experience joy. I saw it. McDuff leaping into the muddy water hole in the reserve then flinging water all over the boys… McDuff ecstatically pretending there were rabbits in the manuka stand… McDuff bouncing up to the boys, hurling himself at them with glee for no other reason that I could observe than he was happy to be alive. After an hour with McDuff I was laughing happily too and realising how dogs can give joy. Don’t tell sister Rosemarie this, but McDuff made my soggy Saturday.
We had a letter from a reader pointing out that the June issue contained too few dogs. It is a happy coincidence, then, that this issue seems to be heavy on dogs – see how many you can count. This has nothing to do with yesterday’s revelation but is simply serendipity. Enter your dog count for this August issue on our website competition and go into the draw to win a gorgeous coat for your dog. Whether or not you are lucky in that draw, you have made a good decision to read NZ House & Garden; we have a record of six houses and four gardens in this issue.
Joyously enjoy, won’t you.
Story: Kate Coughlan
Photographs: Mark Smith
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