Aptly-named dog (France)

Being the slow thinker that I am, it's only just dawned on me during this visit how aptly named Dino is, even though his deceased previous owner (a French farmer) very likely didn't know any English.  The ball of scruff has "din" in his name!  

Dino takes up position immediately outside the kitchen door (at the side of the farmhouse) for that’s a most handy spot for being the first to get all the scraps.  

As soon as he hears one of the other dogs (stationed at the front of the house) bark, he leaps straight into barking action, before he even gets a glimpse of what that dog might be barking at.

He charges out to the front of the farmhouse, woofing with all his might, but -- as Jeanette mimes it to me -- he has absolutely no clue what he’s barking about, glancing around him with a baffled look even while he’s barking furiously, wondering what he is supposed to be barking at or about. 

Often, he rushes up to Patou, the old grandee of the dogs and his arch growling enemy, just barking at him instead.  He seems to be joining in purely for the sake of not wanting to be left out.  The term for it now would be FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

On this winter visit, I’ve had a few more opportunities to test out my theory (developed in September last year) about his having been beaten a lot before he came to the farmhouse.  

My other entry Dino the dirty dog (see link below) mentions his getting up immediately and moving away when you approach him, which smacks (ha! pun!) of his trying to avoid a beating or kicking.  This time, he was a lot more trusting of me, actually allowing me to go all the way up to him, and to pat and stroke his head.  Quite an improvement, indeed, from when I first met him in the summer of 2010.

Once or twice during this winter stay, I’d had to restrain him by the scruff of his neck when I put out a dish of food scraps for the cats and he tried to muscle in.  The high-pitched yelping and whining that he let out sounded like I’d trodden on his feet or whacked him really hard.  (Actually, re-reading this some nine years later, it’s just occurred to me that this high-pitched yelping and whining might’ve been from his mistreatment at the hands of his previous owner.  Only my own theory / suspicions.)

To his credit, though, at least he did not try to disobey or bite me.  

There’s hope yet, then, of training this poor wretched dog to understand that not every hand that reaches out towards him is for inflicting pain.  

Maybe at some point, we can get the “o” (zero noise) out of "Dino", rather than just the constant “din”.

(Gers, France, 2012)

Dino the dirty dog:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/dino-dirty-dog.html

Dino the dirty dog (in more ways than one) (France)

“Dino is an ugly dog.”

Those were Colette’s first words to me about him, poor boy!

He doesn’t look anything like the other dogs on the farm, which are all hunting dogs, numbering at least half a dozen at any one time.

The hunting dogs are brown, short legged, short haired, extremely sociable and get on with everyone else, both four-legged and two-, looking you straight in the eye each time.

There is one that bares its teeth as it waddles up to you, wagging its backside (yes, backside, not tail), which Colette said is meant to be a smile — the baring of teeth, that is, not the wagging of the backside, although tail wagging is a smile when it comes to dogs.

Dino, on the other hand, stands out for miles:  scruffy.  His matted, tangled fur always has clumps of something embedded, and he is constantly scratching.

He is of an indeterminable shade of black and dark grey, has shifty eyes, and wears a perpetual sheepish and apologetic look as if he’s just done something bad (which you have yet to discover).

He’ll get up and shuffle away as soon as you approach, whether you’re going up to him or just passing by, as if he’s afraid of being targeted.  The just in case approach.

He must’ve been beaten a lot, probably for no reason, which might also explain the perpetual sheepish look — he’s come to think he is always in the wrong.  (Reminds me of Billy — see link below for blog entry Bung Deetle Bung Deetle)

Dino had come to the farm as an orphan.  His owner had died in a house fire, which had destroyed everything else but Dino.

Right from the start, Dino failed to fit in, by rubbing the other dogs up the wrong way — more specifically, up the wrong end by sniffing their underparts. 

They took umbrage at this newcomer taking such an over-familiar approach, and warned him off with a few growls at the back of the throat and some rising hackles.

Which should’ve been clear enough to Dino, except that he doesn’t seem to read body-language messages too well, and went ahead with his never-say-die way of doing things.

The growls would grow in volume and duration, then turn into bites, but still he’d go back for more.  If one dog didn’t like his bum sniffed at, Dino would move on to the next, undeterred.  Colette called it sexual harassment.

At one point, Dino teamed up with the loner hen for company when farm mistress Jeanette gave up on putting her back into the poultry pen after several breakouts.  (See link below for The loner hen.)

They’d go for walks together, exploring various parts of the farm: Dino in front, followed by the hen (she does have much shorter legs, after all...).

Until the loner hen got eaten one day — by one of the hunting dogs.

So Dino went back to bum-sniffing, which eventually erupted in a massive retaliation, when the other dogs sank their teeth into him and rolled him about in the mud.  So that’s where he got his matted fur from!

Jeanette is a real sweetie with people, very good-natured and easy-going, but you’d hear her constantly barking at Dino, many times a day.  Without looking out of the window, I’ll know from Jeanette’s ticking off that he’s either been doing some sniffing, or stealing some dog’s food.

He’s not perpetually hungry, though.  One day I found him sitting down with a bun on the ground right in front of him.  As soon as he saw me coming out of the house, he picked it up between his teeth and walked away from me.  Fair enough, he thought I might want to take it from him.  This happened every time I went anywhere near him.  However, hours later, that bun was still uneaten.  So he was just guarding it for the sake of stopping anyone from taking it from him.  Strange dog.

(Update, 10 September 2025:  my brain is so slow, it's just occurred to me that he might've been deprived of food at his previous place, so he'd developed yet another "just in case" strategy, i.e., hang on to whatever food that's in hand for the rainy-day period when there'd be no food.  This would be in tune with his shuffling out of my path whenever I approached or walked past – just in case the passer-by decided to hit him, which I think might have been his experience at his previous place.  This is all only my own conjecture from his behaviour and body language.)

On my way back to London, as the plane was landing, I heard a hoarse raspy sound, a throaty sort of woof woof that was Dino’s bark.  He had stowed away and was following me back!

It turned out to be the speed brakes of the plane rasping.

Caught a bus from where the airport bus dropped me.  As it approached South Kensington Tube station, lo and behold, right ahead was a huge sign that I’d never noticed before, which said:

DINO’s [Italian restaurant]  

No escape from the scruffy dog even back in London.

(France, September 2010)

Update (October 2011):  Coming back on Monday 03 October from my visit to the farm this summer, I took the same bus via South Kensington as last year, and found that Dino's has now become Muriel's Kitchen.  Wonder if it's because they'd read this blog entry and didn't want to be associated with a scruffy dog...?

Bung deetle bung deetle:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/bung-deetle-bung-deetle.html 

The loner hen:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/loner-hen.html 

See also Aptly named dog:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2012/01/aptly-named-dog-france.html