Boofda is enjoying visiting Acacia Lodge; he’s good with elderly people. This morning he follows a high-pitched sound; he tracks it to a gentleman’s room down the far end of a dark corridor. The name on the door says ‘Derek’ but of course that means nothing to a dog. He paws at the handle and the catch gives way. He leavers the door open with his nose and there’s Derek, laying on his bed, face in the pillow, trying to muffle the sound of his sobs. Strokes have that effect on people sometimes. Boofda makes his way to the head of the bed and resting his chin on the mattress he whines in tune with Derek and while he whines, his tail drums on a metal cabinet. Derek weeps, Boofda drums. When the storm has passed and Boof has resumed his rounds, the old man blows his nose and reflects, ‘That drumming, was just the thing.’ He wraps a piece of cabana in a tissue so that the next time their paths cross he can show his gratitude.
Robert has arrived for the sing-along. Legally blind he wears glasses, lenses thick as coke bottles and he uses a stick. He’s a big fellow who can play the piano by ear. There isn’t a song he doesn’t know and he likes grand flourishes. Robert thinks Boofda is a huge joke. He thinks he’s a Labrador and makes cracks about the blind man and the three-legged dog. Robert starts the session with Advance Australia Fair. Then he plays a selection of hits from popular musicals. He has a request for Memories and follows that with Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home. Everyone joins in on this one and they love the key change. Boofda sits with Clarrie at the back of the room who feeds him stale lamington fingers. Clarrie hates sing-a-longs and he loathes Peter Allen, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber and stale lamington fingers from Coles.
On the surface Boofda appears to be behaving himself. But it’s Christmas; there’s magic in the air. The hot evenings blend with the collective excitement of millions of children – the festive mood is palpable. Dogs are sensitive to shifts in atmosphere and they express their sensitivity in individual and subtle ways.
Boofda is snow dropping. He’s stealing ladies underwear. He’s escaping at night and roaming the streets. No one in the house knows about his escapades (except Doug) because when they get up in the morning, he’s there - sound asleep by the back door.
Doug’s an early riser - which is fortunate – because there they are, on the back lawn: some high cut knickers, a g-string and three pairs of cotton-tails. He hides the underwear in the shed, in the grass catcher and pokes it behind a sack of dynamic lifter. He doesn’t want the family making a fuss, blowing things out of proportion. He’ll work this out in his own time, in his own way.
The first thing to do is to work out where Boof is getting out. A search around the fence line reveals no clues. And there’s no sign of any excavation under the house.
Then the second lot arrives: a nursing bra, a half-slip, more cottontails and some black stretchy sports pants.
Then the third lot: scarlet lacy scanties, a silk camisole and more cotton tails. He checks for escape routes every day. It’s a mystery and Doug’s frustration levels are rising. He knows there are people who think him naïve for taking in a Heeler from the Lost Dogs’ Home. He can hear them saying things like, ‘I thought Doug was good with animals but that dog has the upper hand alright.’
Doug’s an honest man and skulking around with ladies underwear at dawn is uncomfortable behaviour. He hears the voice in his head again and this time its saying, ‘I’ve known Doug for years. I’d never have guessed he had a thing for lingerie. What does he do with it I wonder?’
It was at this point, he decided to come clean – deal with the problem openly and honestly before he was caught and misinterpreted. Boofda is stealing and the garments should be returned to their rightful owners – simple as that. Then, something occurs to him. It seems, given the evidence in the grass catcher, that more women wear Bonds highwaisted cotton-tails than any other style of underpants. Hmm …interesting …
He’s especially anxious to get this issue resolved because his mother is arriving any day and staying for Christmas and New Year. He finds her presence in the house aggravating in the extreme: vague, indecisive, obstructionist, a traveller in the right lane of life but refusing to go over 50. Her visits cause distressful childhood memories to bubble to the surface – all too silly to confide in anyone. He endues these memories silently like one endues haemorrhoids.
Its 4.00 in the afternoon. Doug is on his way home from Acacia Lodge. Boofda is riding in the tray of the ute, nose pointing into the wind, ears flying, a loop of saliva over his nose. Doug swings into the Coles car park. He plans to pick up a few things for dinner and a packet of laundry detergent. He’s decided to wash the stolen underwear and place it over the front fence. That way people can see what’s theirs and reclaim their belongings. The simplest plans are always the best.
He picks up a plastic basket from behind the checkout and strides up and down the aisles – cream, turmeric, anchovies, Kalamata olives, capers, pasta and cinnamon sticks. Doug is a spectacular cook, a skill he acquired in spite of his mother. Finally, he visits the laundry aisle where he pauses, momentarily overwhelmed by choice.
Then he sees it. OMO! His stomach goes tight and he mouths OMO as he reaches out and touches the box. He belches and up it bubbles – a memory.
When Doug was a little boy, he lived in a house on a hill with his Mum and brother and an empty space. The empty space was his Dad, newly dead from cancer. The house faced west and there were steps up to the front door. The front yard was big with nothing in it, like a paddock. It was the best place to play in the afternoons after school. There were two boys living over the road and altogether, they played an endless game of football – playing and calling at the same time. They didn’t watch much television. Sometimes if there was something special, they would put an alarm clock on the bottom step and when it rang they would stop play, wrestle their way into the TV room and watch whatever. When the program finished, they’d turn off the TV and pick up the game where they’d left off. They watched the ads with the same enthusiasm as the shows and knew all the jingles. It was during an episode of Dogtanian & the Three Muskethounds that an ad for OMO came on but it wasn’t like an ad, it was a competition. It showed a Mini Minor with a giant box of OMO on the roof driving slowly around suburban streets. You could see it over the tops of hedges, turning corners and driving through intersections. Then it pulled up outside a house and a beautiful lady stepped out of the car in a uniform like an airhostess and smiled a smile to melt a boy’s heart. She opened the front gate, walked up the path and pressed the doorbell. A Mum with an apron answered and the OMO lady asked her if she had a box of OMO in the house. BINGO! The Mum produced a box of OMO and the lady gave her a magnificent stainless steel carving plate with spikes in it to stop the roast from slipping when you carved. Then you saw the happy family sitting around a table smiling and eating roast and the Dad was beaming because now he could carve happily. All this, because Mum had a box of OMO in the cupboard.
A few days after they’d seen the ad, the boys saw an incredible sight. They froze in the middle of the match - a giant box of OMO was jiggling its way down the street! Doug, being the youngest was the most affected by this sight. It was like he was in a story; it was like the car had come out of the TV. It was fantastic!
The four stood there, mouth breathing. She was slowing down outside the neighbours – no, she was still creeping along. Unbelievable! She stopped right in front of Doug’s house! She climbed out of the car, stood for a moment and pulled down her tight skirt. Then she looked up, opened the gate and smiled at Doug. He blushed. She was like a movie star. ‘Is you mother home?’ Doug didn’t answer. Instead he turned and ran up the front steps, two at a time. And with all his lung power he called, ‘MU-UM!’
His mother came to the door wearing an apron and on her head she had a hair dryer. It was a big plastic mobcap with a fat tube extending from it and joined to a machine in a round vinyl box that she was holding with some difficulty. From the box trailed a long electric cord. She lifted the cap above one ear and turned it to the OMO lady who shouted into it. ‘DO YOU HAVE A BOX OF OMO IN YOUR LAUNDRY?’ There was a considered pause followed by a definite, ‘NO.’ The women smiled and nodded and then the door shut.
Doug stood there unable to believe what he’d just witnessed. How could she not have a box of OMO in the cupboard? How could she hurt him like this? He looked up at the OMO lady who shrugged.
Just at that moment the cat emerged from wherever it’d been sleeping and rubbed itself against the lady’s legs. She said, ‘Is this your cat?’ He nodded. She sat on the steps and picked it up. She rubbed noses with it and nestled its face into her neck and the cat purred. Doug wished he were the cat.
Then she passed the animal to him, stood and brushed the fur off her uniform. She smiled, skipped down the steps and with a little wave stepped through the gate-way. Doug heard the car door open and close, the engine start and he watched the big box of OMO jiggle away. He buried his nose in the cat and there was a wondrous thing. He could smell her perfume. He breathed it in and closed his eyes with the pure pleasure of it.
The boys called him back to the game but he didn’t want to play anymore. He just wanted to sniff the cat and think about the happy Dad carving the roast on the stainless steal plate with spikes that stopped the meat form slipping.
Back home, Doug goes straight to the shed and fishes all the underwear out from the grass catcher. He’s like an automaton loading the washing machine. He pours in the OMO then stiff-legged, retires to the kitchen and rips the scab off a can of beer. In the space between leaving Acacia Lodge and home, the wind has gone out of his sails. He’s becalmed in the past, unable to function in the present. He reaches out with his foot and rubs Boofda on the back who then rolls over and exposes his belly, tight as a drum. He’s starting to feel a little more put together. There’s no doubt – there is a part of Doug’s psyche where humans are unwelcome –that is out of bounds. But dogs have unlimited access.
He drains the can, lifts one cheek, farts and scratches his left armpit. He’s back in the present and he’s made a decision. He will be an accessory after the fact. ‘Bugger it mate! Who’d want to wear undies that you’d slobbered in anyway.’
He goes to the laundry (Boofda follows) and turns the cycle to spin. When the machine clicks to a stop he’s standing there with a plastic bag. He loads the underwear into it, ties the top in a knot then buries the lot under the rubbish in the wheelie bin.
Doug’s mother arrives from Castlemaine. She’s very excited because the ABC has been filming in the town – an historical drama. She’s been an extra. She’s never met Boofda before and she likes him very much. She says he’s a ‘Dear’ and that he has ‘wise eyes’ and she suggests that Doug take him to an animal agency. ‘They use dogs like Boofda in Toyota ads.’
With all the extra activity in the house and the mounting excitement leading up to Christmas Day, Boofda is distracted from his wandering ways and Doug finds no scanties in the garden for several weeks. He relapses towards the end of January and again on one warm night in March but once the cool evenings arrive he abandons snow dropping and chooses instead to spend the nights curled up next to a heating duct in the hallway.
It’s around this time Charles is commissioned to make an instructional DVD for farmers. Cars and Dogs: the do’s and don’ts of canine safety in work vehicles. He wants to show a before and after shot. A farmer driving around with his cattle dog unrestrained in the back of a ute. Then he’ll have an animation of the car hitting a bump and the dog being thrown out. Then it will cut to Boofda limping along on three legs and a male voice over will say, ‘Three legs good, Four legs better. Think safe, Act safe, work safe.’
For a slab Doug agrees. Was there ever such a talented dog
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