Alfie: The Cartographer’s Companion

There is a sketch of Alfie in the front of the West Yorkshire Moors book. He sits alertly on the summit of Dog Hill at a time when one of his ears pointed up and one down. His facial markings that would steadily soften over the years were sharp and tended to make him look slightly cross. His creamy chest and darker two-tone back always made him look like a particularly dapper gentleman in a suit (when we once got a bow tie on him it suited him to a tee). His expression is anxious and inquisitive, a great contrast to our old retriever Dolly who is reclined contentedly alongside. The two never coincided other than in this fanciful sketch, but it is a reminder this week that Alfie has been there with me for part of every book I have published, a list that has now reached double figures. He has earned his rest.

Alfie arrived in our lives in January 2012. We perched awkwardly on a sofa in Hayling Island as a 5-month old puppy was ushered towards us. He did not want to know and it felt like we were part of an arranged marriage. We were soon bundling the unwilling bride into the back of the car in a cage we’d had for years but finally served its purpose as Alfie’s bed for the first few weeks. He shook and panted for the whole 6-hour journey home, as he would for just about every journey for the rest of his life. We stopped to let him out to pee and he stood there a terrified bundle of fur, wondering why having escaped the streets of Greece he’d now been torn from his mother’s side. He spent his first night in Yorkshire cowering in the furthest corner of the room beneath a table while I watched the NFL. It was an inauspicious start.

The product of a chance Facebook encounter between Caroline and his rescuers, Stewart and Katia (to whom we all owe so much), Alfie wasn’t the dog we expected. Smaller and more pointy, we had prepared for an imaginary dog we were going to give a Greek name like Hector, Zorba or Makis (obviously my choice), but Alfie was always an Alfie. He was a mummy’s boy from the start and bonded quickly with Caroline, who trained him with great patience, but he could never understand my masculinity (to be fair neither can I). Any attempt at authority terrified him and I tired of trying to voice that was firm but not angry. In the end we settled on the order that suited Alfie, me leading the way, Alfie in the middle and Caroline behind – the only times he raised his voice other than at the postman was to defend her honour. We each had our role; Caroline was safety and security and I was adventure, but the street dog in him always preferred the former.

My first big solo outing on the moors with Alfie ended so badly that we never even made it to the moors. After a couple of hours I gave him a treat and something about the interaction freaked him out so he started skittering around nervously, a familiar trick that meant I couldn’t get close to him to put him on the lead. After trying for ages to tempt him back or approach him, I started to walk off down the track and he followed, but never close enough to get him back. The route then led across sheep fields and I ploughed on in frustration as Alfie leapt over stiles and ignored the nearby sheep (to which he was partial on occasion) in his desperation not to lose me. Yet I could not corral him and ended up waiting at the next roadside for Caroline to drive over and rescue us. There were other similar occasions, including when he ended up loose in St George’s Square with old George trying to lure him with bacon from the butcher, but as ever all he wanted was Caroline.

Mercifully things improved slowly and as his ears grew more and more alert he seemed to grow in confidence. When I began working on my next books, he became my permanent companion on forays throughout the woods of both the Calder and Aire Valleys. While I wandered to and fro mapping obscure paths and tree types, he thought we were working together, chasing squirrels for the pot. However bad he was at hunting, he must have thought I was hopeless. Yet he would follow me day after day around the county, often so close to my heel that when I looked round I panicked that he’d disappeared. He followed me through overgrown thickets of vegetation that dwarfed him, through snow drifts twice his height, over barbed wire fences that he had to leap as he wouldn’t let me lift him over. When I sat down for lunch, he’d sit at a distance and sit alertly keeping guard. Only when we got home would he relax and collapse tiredly on his bed (or increasingly ours).

He accompanied me in South Yorkshire until he blotted his copybook chasing sheep around the plantations beneath Win Hill. We walked sections of the coast path as a family in North Yorkshire, Dorset, Somerset and Northumberland. When I was booked as a guide for a group of American Brontë pilgrims, Alfie quickly stole the show. He loved a female crowd and each time they booked me they started asking if Alfie was coming until I realised it was really him they were booking not me. Whenever I was required to do a photo-shoot for an article, I took Alfie hoping his handsome shine would rub off on me, but the photographer was invariably so distracted by him that I barely got a look in. There is nothing more photogenic than Alfie in a sunny wood full of bluebells!

In recent years he retired from his work at my side after walking his little legs off on the coast path a couple of times. A lover of the comforts of home over constant travels, retirement suited him. He remained a fit and healthy blighter until mouth cancer made this summer his last. The dog who made such a fuss whenever he got stung or pulled a muscle was remarkably stoic as the weight fell off him and his tongue was pushed out the side of his mouth so that eating and drinking became a tortuous hardship. Throughout he trotted behind me into the woods, still heartbreakingly at my heel until he sniffed out a foetid corpse that he could no longer possibly digest. I have never felt so unconditionally adored.

Goodbye sweet little boy, I’ll miss you every time I walk through the woods. I’ll miss you gently leaning your head into my hand. I’ll miss you licking my legs after the bath. I’ll miss you tearing apart tussocks of grass as if you’d finally caught that elusive squirrel. I’ll miss the sweet earthiness of the soft fur on your head. I’ll miss you looking disgruntled and fed up while I’m watching endless rugby at the Fox & Goose. I’ll miss walking round the house calling you all kinds of stupid names (Alfalottle, Mr Crunch, Oatsosoft, Puppendorf, Grunchkin-san, Buffinby, Keyser Snoze, Snuffleberry Hound, Rupert Pupkin, You Little ******) and incorporating you into every song (The Last Great American Dog, This Is Ground Control to Alfie Dog,I’m a Vomi Dog (in a Vomi World)). I’ll miss you gently knocking at the bedroom door to get on the bed. I’ll miss your hopeful look every time I walk past, of a walk, meal, treat or just a pat. I’ll miss looking round to see your silly paddle paws that were always slightly too long bouncing cheerfully along behind me. And I’ll smile every time I think of you brightening up my days.