Stop it at once. Scoop your mind up from the gutter and act your age, not your IQ. There is not going to be one iota of double entendre in this merry pondering of the noble and humble sausage. I am referring to the perfectly correctly named sausage dog and not the delicacy wrapped in pastry. For you see, within the last week, I have joined an elite and discerning circle – including but not limited to Picasso, Jack Ruby, Grover Cleveland and Adele – by spending two weeks’ wages on a fourteen week old dachshund puppy. (Adele probably didn’t spend two week’s wages or if she did, she was conned into buying the most expensive dachshund in Europe).
This is how my little purchase came about. Almost every year since I was born my mother and I have been to a county show: the New Forest Show, the Royal Welsh, Morton in the Marsh and now the Northumberland County Show. Aged 3 I curled up with a swarm of otterhounds, aged 8 my ferret won the ferret race (a sport endorsed by the Conservative party as a programme encouraging ferrets to get off benefits and train as plumbers), aged 15 we got chickens as a result of one lap of the poultry tent. We’re kind of suggestible that way. And every year I have sat in various rare-breeds and petting enclosures, and begged and begged to smuggle a guinea pig or rabbit home under my jumper. And during the long dark teatime of the soul that was my immediate post-MA unemployment, many a happy day was deliriously frittered away in pursuit of a lionhead rabbit. So this year, as happens every year, I said I wanted a guinea pig and, as happens every year, my mother heartlessly said no. She asked me why I wanted one and I said it was because I couldn’t have a dog. And she plunged head first, Homer Simpson-like, over the edge of the precipice: ‘you can have a dog if you want one’. So I spent two days on the internet and arranged to buy a dachshund before the maternal melting mood passed. Compared to going from the preferable state of ‘not considering a cocker spaniel’ to the far less restful scenario of ‘owning a cocker spaniel’ within half an hour, this is pretty slow thinking.
Our latest member of the family’s Kennel Club name is a brand of Scottish bottled water which we sell at work, and she spent the first two days nameless whilst I agonised over lists and naming books, but I now often catch myself calling her ‘little sausage’, reminding me irresistibly of One Hundred and One Dalmations: ‘Mr Dearly always called the tiny puppy Cadpig, which can be a nice little name when spoken with love’. And this – along with the fact that I have already had a blopic called dogs – is why, dear reader, this blog is so titled. See. Not a drop of vulgarity in sight.
A note about the impeccable members of the daxie club. Adele’s dachshund is called Louis after her musical idol Louis Armstrong, although I suspect her short-haired monster is a less talented trumpeter. Jack Ruby, who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald after he in turn had assassinated President Kennedy, had ten of the little things, including Sheba often referred to as his wife. So many hounds either explains his unsound mind and murderous tendencies, or getting them was simply a manifestation that a good psychiatrist should have picked up on. Former President of the United States Grover Cleveland had three dachshunds who are the envy of their species being the only ones of their breed to have lived in the White House (JFK briefly owned Dunker – fab name by the way – but left him in Germany due to allergies, which must have been quite something to require a distance of approximately 4 170 miles). Finally, my heart is actually won over by Picasso whose adorable dachshund Lump features in much of his artwork. J’adore. Or rather, en espanol ‘me encanta’.
PS. The big reveal. *drum roll* After my mother and I painstakingly considered every name in the human language, several objects, rivers and towns, and used up more paper than the earth’s resources can comfortably manage on lists, we finally dismissed Bumble, Posy, Edith, Gussie, Plum, Moth and Flora – trust me, those are the edited highlights from the shortlist, whittled down over the days with more rounds and critique than the Nobel Prize – and settled upon Martha. It suits her. It’s a great Beatles song (named after Paul McCartney’s old English sheepdog). It’s a lovely character in The Secret Garden (which I wrote my MA dissertation on). And the nation’s favourite hobbit, doctor and office-worker Martin Freeman has a dachshund named Arthur. Thus being homage. Superb!
PPS. Since writing this blog, I have learned that my absolute literary hero P G Wodehouse had a dachshund named Jed. Of Dachshunds, the divine Mr Wodehouse wrote: “Talking of being eaten by dogs, there’s a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It’s all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply-” “Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?” “That’s it. Pure swank.” And this fact just about makes my life complete.
KatePonders 
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