Send in the dogs….

Did any of you see the CCTV last year of the man in Wales who tried to take his pony on the train? Yes that’s right, his pony. He was captured by the cameras leading his pony into the station lift and onto the platform. On arrival of his train he calmly opened the doors and got on. Can you imagine the surprise of his fellow passengers on seeing a white pony board the train. Of course the intrepid guard did not allow his equine passenger to travel. I understand he had bought a ticket using a senior railcard when he was quite obviously only a yearling!!!!!!!!!! I heard that the pony enjoyed his day out so much that the next day he went to the zoo and then the local cinema!

This made me think about other animals I have seen on the train. Of course I did have a horde of football fans that trashed a first class carriage after an FA Cup defeat that was apparently hard to take. But I am talking about our four legged friends. Now I have never had anything bigger than a dog on board the train. However, even as a committed dog lover I am always wary when I find them in the confined space of the train. As you know the one thing we can be sure of is we don’t know how the dog will react. It is fair to say in 95% of cases the animals are fine and often take no notice of me or anybody else on board. However, that does leave 5% and it is this 5% that passes into railway folklore. I have been growled at, snapped at and barked at, and that’s just by the passengers, but my worst run in with a dog came some 3 years ago. Late one balmy summer evening I was on one of the last trains to the City.  A middle aged rather tough looking man, you know the type, all tattoos and heavy gold jewellery with a shaven head, got on the train with 2 German Shepherd dogs. Now these dogs were not puppies if you know what I mean. To be honest they would not have looked out of place outside Baskerville Hall. But, ever the professional I went for a ticket check. As I approached the trio the dogs went on full alert. Now they say dogs can smell fear, let me tell you I could smell fear. ‘Are they friendly?’ I stuttered.

‘Most of the time’ came a slightly menacing reply.  Both dogs sat to attention and stared ahead right at me and I am sure I noticed some lip curling going on.  Bravely I asked ‘have you got a ticket mate?’

‘No’ OK this was not the answer I was expecting or wanting. I looked at the dogs, I looked at the guy and decided this was not the time to push it. At this point I noticed that the carriage was completely clear of other passengers and it was about now I decided to make a tactical withdrawal back to where I had come from and the safety of the back cab with its lockable, savage-dog proof doors. I calmly unlocked the door,  stepped in and was relieved to have made it back to my safe haven. Yet my relief was premature for as I turned to await the doors to shut, and if you are familiar with train doors they do take an eternity to close, the maniac dog owner let out a command that was understood by both dogs and unwilling victim ‘fetch’ at which point both dogs hurtled free from their leads down the train towards my door where I was standing. Now readers, many things went through my head most of which are unprintable but it was about now I began to ponder the working of a train door. You see when you are training you are taught the many different ways to open a train door often in an emergency that you hope will never happen. Now, can you think of a flaw in our training? No, then let me enlighten you. How do you close the doors in an emergency? This procedure does not crop up in the syllabus. Well I can give you the answer. You can’t close the doors in an emergency. You can push that door for all your worth, you can flick whatever switch you can reach but that door is going to close only when the door itself deems that you have endured enough of whatever peril is bearing down upon you. In my case that peril was 2, not 1, but 2 extremely large and even more angry canine conductor hunter killers.  As I stood rooted to the spot with nowhere to go even if my legs hadn’t turned to concrete posts a dramatic race began to unfold, dog versus door. I don’t know if the man had pulled this stunt before but I take my hat off to his timing for just as the two dogs reached me the doors shut, and I locked them tight. When the feeling came back to my legs I took a step forward to spy into the train. The carriage now appeared empty but I decided to stay in the safety of the cab rather than risk a potential ambush. I never did see the man or the dogs get off the train and fortunately I have not seen him since and I never want to.

Animals are nothing if not unpredictable and are capable of doing things which are so funny you have to pinch yourself to see if they are true. I am reminded of another dog ‘funny’ in my previous job as the man from the Pru(insurance salesman). My job involved going to peoples houses to try and sell insurance policies. One day, whilst accompanied by my boss, I went to visit, let’s call her Mrs R.  Now Mrs R lived on a local council run estate and we turned up for a first visit. These appointments were called fact finds and were designed to gather data about our prospective client so we could make sound financial recommendations. They were normally very relaxed affairs and would last about an hour. So, we arrived at Mrs R’s house and as we walked up the path a rather skinny mongrel dog walked with us to her door. We were invited in and as we went into the house the dog came in with us and lay down in the sitting room where we were to have the meeting. No parties present commented on the dog, who, seemed very at home. During the meeting Mrs R offered us a cup of tea which we gratefully accepted. However, whilst she was making the tea the dog got up and started to walk round in circles. As a dog owner I recognised the tell tale signs of a dog about to go to the toilet. Sure enough the dog confirmed my fears and proceeded to defecate right in front of us. Both myself, and my colleague exchanged rather embarrassed looks but if the truth be told we found it rather funny.  When Mrs R returned with the tea she immediately took one look at the ‘deposit’ and rather than scold the dog she looked at the two of us with a kind of disgusted look but continued to serve tea without any reference to the offending item. Finally the meeting came to its natural conclusion and we left on reasonably good terms. During all this time the dog never moved, in fact you wouldn’t have known it was there but for the odd audible moan of contentment.  As we said our goodbyes and walked down the path Mrs R called out behind us ‘Hey, aren’t you going to take your dog with you?’

You see, it wasn’t her dog.

Dogs surely are mans best friend but on both the above occasions I was not pleased to see them unlike the guard in Wales who will be eating out for years thanks to a man with white pony.