Bingara Mayo's Son - Page 3 of 4
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Buddy got out of the car and looked around with an expression of pure horror. I was handed a pile of blue ribbons which said animal was supposed to have won. I read them….Campbelltown, Dapto, Warringah, Sutherland Shire, Fairfield, St.George, Hawkesbury, and to cap all, "Blaxland - Glenbrook R.S.L.& Citizens Kennel & T. Club”.
"Don't exactly move in high society, does he?" I said. "What’s the owner been doing with him? Hiding him in the bush before painting him brown and trying to take out the Irish Whippet Cup at the Royal?" Brendan maintained a dignified silence, apart from saying with some semblance of hurt, "Anyway, he bit a collie, yesterday."
My further reply that I would have liked Bingara Mayo's Son somewhat better if he had managed to bite either a copper at the C.I.B. conference or Ita Buttrose, didn't go down to well, so without further ado, we adjourned to the pub for a couple of rums. But just before we departed, a stray kitten that had been hurled over the fence by some generous neighbour the night before, walked up to the dog. Hello, I thought, here's a go then. We'll see a bit of action and get rid of that cat at the same time, without the messy bit of sacks and drowning. The moggie walked right up to Bingara Mayo's Son and stuck its nose on his. The dog looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned tail and slunk away under a tree.
That was the start of it all. Since then the brilliance of his character has unfolded day by day. We found out, for instance, that he not only had no idea what a raw bone was, but that as far as we know, he is the only dog in the world, who, instead of digging a hole and putting said bone in said hole, attempts, by sheer physical strength, to force it underground by pushing it directly downward with his nose. Since our soil is solid clay, Bingara Mayo's Son's nose is somewhat squashed.
He possesses some rudiments of dog etiquette. He knows that when one meets another dog, one has a piss and a sniff, but he can't cock his leg properly and falls over on his side. He is also dimly aware that when one meets another dog one usually scratches the ground up a bit with the back feet, but he doesn't realise that one has a piss then a scratch, so that he just stands there in one spot, scratching and sending grass and clods of earth all over the place in all directions, while the visiting dog looks on in amazement.
He can't understand what sheep are and sits gloomily watching them for hours. And as for horses - well, they bother him so much that he pretends they are not there at all. Enemy dogs are also no problem, because he doesn't seem to have the mechanism to get his hackles up. But he's game. He stands directly in front of the enemy and barks straight into their face. Oddly enough, the said adversary usually opens his jaws and fastens them firmly on Bingara Mayo's Son's nose. This upsets him. It upsets me. It upset's the other half of the greenie, groupie community. It upsets dam near everybody in the hamlet. But where does one find a blue heeler school of street fighting? The yellow pages are no help.
One can go on : about his method of seeing intruders off the place - (barking once and running like hell in the opposite direction): about his sneaky and cowardly habit of trying to bully the cat when he thinks no one is looking : about the day he got everything totally wrong and made a sexual pass at the cat and got his face slashed: about the time he was badly scared by Beverly defrosting the refrigerator and cowered under the house for three hours; about the time he got a nasty scare from the coke bucket: about the time he got an erection and tried to bite it off in sheer panic: and of how the Wag Tails make his life one misery.
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