yap

Mrs Lovely was later to say that her husband had been 'well appalled.' He might not much like their dog Pompom (a husband thing, I understand: although in our family and those of many of my chums, a wife thing, too) but if anyone is to say so it is he, and not the big tummed ex-police inspector.

Big Tum patrols the dog field daily with Florian, a tiny dog dangling from his wrist: so often the way, a case of dog not resembling owner at all, at least not in ways that are immediately obvious. It is a sedate perambulation theirs, and each has a frown for human and dog accordingly. For some reason, however, their walk is always timed to coincide with ours; although I know he’s the rising at dawn sort. Never trouble trouble I want to say.
He has an infinite store of rectitude to draw on, and a boundless capacity for passing on a wise word; a finger-wagging man, one of that enviable breed who is always in the right. Long after the event, does he feel the need to remind me from time to time, just when I’m relaxing into the hope of his having forgotten, of the occasion when Lolly, a mere puppy, had leapt through their sitting room window in search of Florian, trailing in her eager wake the newly planted window box.
“Yes, a lot of mud,” his nervous wife will echo, “Goodness, a lot.”
What can you say? The chance to offer to hoover is past by many moons.
And then last week, it all went a bit wrong when it was his dog who leapt with extraordinary and unprecedent vigour onto the back of Lolly and gave it his all to shag her senseless into the ground.

“Florian!” squeaked Big Tum’s nervous wife, her squeal reaching unto the stars.
“FLORIAN!” bellowed Big Tum, bypassing pink and going straight to purple.
Florian, conveniently deaf, clasped his paws the tighter round Lolly and rutted away. His penis, friends, was glistening.
I’m afraid I laughed which did little to appease their mood.

The next day I was late into the field and encountered Big Tum on his way out. “The hooligans are already down there,” he boomed, sweeping on past, giving me a bit of a look.
I strolled through, met my dog-walking friends, and told them what he said.
Mrs Lovely was slow to react. She glanced around the field and then her head snapped back and she whimpered, “Us! He means us! That’s Florian’s Daddy said that?”
“Yes,” I said, “Big Tum.”
“Oh, is that his name, I always call him Florian’s Daddy.”
“I think he was a Chief Inspector,” I said.
“Well. My. And he called us all hooligans?”
“Not us, so much as you,” I said. I thought back, “Yes, he definitely said, “the hooligans” and not “the other hooligans”.”
“Well I don’t know if we like that very much, do we, Pompom?” said Mrs Lovely carefully.

Mrs Rich, who inhabits one of the smartest houses in the county, looked stunned. Even her lavatories have fireplaces, they have cornices and take a stride to cross. Rife with Tena Lady potential for the slow to plan. There are three staircases from ground to first and the kitchen is 70’ long. Not one to breed a yob. She glanced around for her hooligan, Lacey, who boasts a Cath Kidston bed (chewed) in her custom-built crate (“Yes, we kitted it out in advance beautifully. Such a shame, really, when the dog herself turned up, you know, when we brought her home and it spoiled things so”) and a raised day bed from Oka (£150+. Also chewed). We'd bought Lolly a new bed in the week. £15 grudgingly spent, already not the fragrant thing it was. Lacey was to be found face-deep in a pile of horse manure, someone else’s play stick held firm under her paw.
"But they have such fun," she said. "No harm's done. It's personality, isn't it? Only playing."

There was a lusty splashing in the river. It’s not a river, it’s as if someone left a tap on for ten minutes and made a bit of a puddle, but we call it the river. Pompom came crashing through, soaked and muddy, a beady look in his eye. In the distance a speck of fur had revealed itself. It was the JewishPrincessFootStool dog. An elderly cavalier spaniel of generous proportions and little retaliation. In a trice, Pompom had made it up the hill and was on JPFS’s back.
Mrs Lovely set off at a cumbersome lick, cooing hopelessly, “Pompom! Pompom!” She rattled a little bag of scraps enticingly.
Pompom, more Errol Flynn than cuddly toy, despite his rampant curls and wild fluff, was not going to be lured by some rubbishy old chicken in a bag, not when the JewishPrincessFootStool dog was at paw.
Within seconds he had mounted her and was rocking away in true happy hooligan style.

“Pompom!” Mrs Lovely wailed, “Don’t!”

The stout and tardy figure of JPFS’s owner lurched into view. A woman upholstered like a sofa, clad all in chintz; presumed a long-term virgin. She looked on somewhat enviously, as Pompom had his wild way with her dog. Dreaming of her very own gentleman callers, a Cuthbert perhaps, or Ron, she gazed wistfully, lost in vicarious daydream.
The JewishPrincessFootStool dog is always available for Pompom. She splays her legs and lowers her rear quarters, “C’mon, Pompom, do your worst.”

Mrs Lovely was red in the face with shame.
“Pompom!” she hissed, “How could you!”
Quite easily, thought Pompom gripping harder and pumping wildly – if ineffectively since he’s been ‘done.’

The owner licked her lips. Her dog, her daughter, the beauty of the family, albeit slightly dim, like an obedient but simple girl, easy of virtue and guilelessly taking off her knickers and doing as 'he' wants. The slut. The lucky, lucky slut.
“Think nothing of it,” she trilled, her voice slightly higher than might originally have been planned.

We went our merry ways. Mothers of hooligans.
“First the twins, now the dog,” wailed Mrs Lovely, her frisky children brought to mind, "It's not what I thought it was going to be, any of it."
“You must have been very, very bad in your previous life,” I said.
“I do hope so,” said she. "Really, I do."