Easter grandparenting

With the grandkids due to visit us again at the weekend, my mind naturally wanders back to Easter, when they were with us last.

Easter! School was out, giving the grandkids a perfect opportunity to visit us in Valencia where, as they run no risk of forgetting, ice cream gets served daily. And to have all the fun that Easter itself provides.

Part of the fun of an Easter visit...
Escher painted hands. So why shouldn’t Elliott paint his?

Easter, as we all know, is the feast of chocolate, with some egginess, bunniness and lambiness thrown in. Just like Halloween has nothing to do with the eve of All Saints Day, but everything to do with pumpkins along with whimsical and only slightly sinister costumes. Or Christmas has nothing to do with the arrival on earth of the prince of peace and redeemer of mankind and everything to do with a large jovial fellow in a big white beard and a red suit, travelling by flying sleigh drawn by reindeers and bringing – the best bit! – gifts, gifts, gifts.

There are those, the more purist among us, who haven’t quite got the Easter message. They think it’s to do with the death and resurrection of the son of God, gaining the redemption of mankind by his own sacrifice. Well, this is a slightly odd view, as the French philosopher Diderot pointed out, since God ordained the suffering of mankind (you know, after that nasty business with the apple in the Garden of Eden) and Christ is himself God, so what we’re being asked to believe is that God sent himself to earth to suffer and die to save mankind from the punishment he had himself decreed for it.

Anyway, to settle all doubts in the matter, I’m glad to say that I have here the very passage from scripture that justifies the much more widespread interpretation of Easter. I confess that it doesn’t figure in any of the four gospels and, indeed, it’s a little obscure where exactly in holy writing it appears, but please read it and I’m sure you’ll agree with me in attributing the appropriate authority to it:

And thus spake he, ‘go forth and discover one of the bunny kind, and let him travel wide and far among the woods, and there find secret places where chocolate may be left so that only they who are diligent will find it, and that chocolate shall have forms various and diverse, as of eggs, but also of creatures of the woodland or the farm, as perhaps other bunnies or hens or lambs, and with them shall be concealed also forms of creatures long gone that are of the kind known as dinosaurs, but these shall be made of plastic’. 

Well, we took the grandkids into the woods and, lo and behold, hidden in the trees, they found various chocolate items, in the form mostly of eggs but also of bunnies or hens and, wonder of wonders, in an eery coincidence given the scripture I’ve just quoted, dinosaur toys made of plastic. I will admit that they had a little guidance in their quest. When my son, their father Nicky, and I showed up with them, Sheena their mother and Danielle their grandmother were already there and they provided helpful hints to direct the kids’ attention to the places most likely to contain anything worth finding.

Look what we’ve found...

The kids had a great time and, thanks to some strict rationing applied by Danielle and Sheena, sickness was avoided.

I’m glad to say that dinosaurs were not the only members of the animal kingdom that Matilda and Elliott met while they were with us. Nor were all those creatures made of plastic. They had a fine session with living animals of the equine kind (sitting on them) and one of the canine persuasion (to be handled with care).

The horses (well, ponies) provided them with what was in fact their second outing as riders. We’re now looking at where to sign them up for something a little more sustained in the way of training when they’re with us for a slightly longer time and can take advantage of it. But in the meantime, even if all they were doing was having a bit of a wander around on ponies being led by a kind and pleasant pair of instructors, they enjoyed themselves enormously.

Even better than plastic dinosaurs

As for the dog, this was the occasion they first met Max, our latest addition to the household, as I’ve described before. That was just a tad more fraught. Max, a recent recruit from a shelter for rescued dogs is a podenco, the classic Spanish breed, much prized by hunters, but only for a season or so, until they decide they’re no use, or no use any more, and abandon them somewhere by a roadside far from home. 

During such an existence, the dogs don’t get much exposure to kids. So when poor old Max met these two little bundles of speed and – how shall I put this? – un-quietness is perhaps the most tactful term, he had no idea what to make of them. He decided, as most animals do faced with something unfamiliar, that they might well be a threat. So he growled and even made a less than friendly move towards them. That’s not to say that he did anything that caused any harm, just that he suggested he might.

So there’s some training to be done. Though I don’t want to leave you the impression that the first encounter was all bad. There was joy too, especially over walking him, which Matilda and Elliott did together. 

Walking the new dog

Much to his pleasure and theirs.

Mostly Mild Max

People talk about a ‘one-month anniversary’, don’t they? Unfortunately, my ingrained pedantry rebels at that expression, since the whole point about the prefix ‘anni’ is that it relates to a year. We need a different word.

My humble proposal (and and I pride myself on my humility) is ‘mensiversary’.

Max moving in
‘Hey, who’s this other dog?’

The second of April was the first mensiversary of the latest addition to our household. That’s the arrival of Max. He’s a Podenco, a classic Spanish dog, which makes our taking one a symbol of our assimilation to our adopted nation. 

Not that the symbolism was the reason we took him. We need exercise and our Toy Poodles, Luci and Toffee, for all the joy they bring us, have had pretty much as much walking as they can stand when we get to half an hour. Max feels he’s barely got going when he’s done 5 km (3 miles if you insist on sticking with the measures of the empire) and he likes that twice a day, so he keeps us very much on our feet before leaving us on our backs. 

Like many nations the world over, Spain is a highly divided society. People of opposing views glare at each across a chasm of incomprehension on many issues – the rights of immigrants, the status of Catalonia, the appropriateness of kissing a football player on the lips without her consent and, in particular, on animal welfare. As well as the fans, there are those who regard bullfighting as a barbaric form of entertainment obtained by torturing an animal before putting him to death. Hunting, too, is divisive, between those who see it as a sport and those who regard it as a way to take pleasure from the killing of living things. And there are hunters who like to use Podencos for a year or two and then abandon them by a roadside somewhere, while in the opposite camp are those who try to take them to shelters that give them all the care charitable donations allow them to provide. 

Max was one of the rescued. Not that he was Max when we met him. Someone had given him the name ‘Hannover’ which, as well as being a bit of a mouthful for a dog’s name, made no sense given he had absolutely no connection with Germany. ‘Max’ is short, easy to say and easy to recognise, which is what a dog’s name needs to be.

So Max he became. Not in any way in tribute to the ‘Mad Max’ of Hollywood fame. He’s about as sane as they come. I’ve never known a dog with a temperament as quiet and gentle as his. It was a week before we heard him so much as bark.

That isn’t the reputation of the Podenco breed.

‘Oh, you want to be careful with them,’ people would tell us, ‘they’re hunters, you know. And once they’re off the lead, they go hunting. Good luck to you on getting them back before they’re exhausted or hungry or both.’

They follow that kind of warning up with some blood-chilling tale.

‘My Podenco still runs away all the time. I’ve got a GPS device on her collar and I can tell where she is, but when I move towards her, she just moves somewhere else. Once, I spent three hours tracking her and then had time to go home, get some food, and return to tempt her back to me with something to eat.’

Well, we got to know Max before we took him. We visited the shelter several times, taking various dogs out for walks to see if we could work out how they’d behave. Of them all, Max was the one who showed no inclination to clear off, never barked, never growled at other dogs, and showed both affection and a good temper. 

So we took him, even though he was nothing like the dog we’d had in mind. Danielle goes for male cats but female dogs (she also goes for male children, which she’s done three times over, but that’s not something that depends on her choice). We also wanted a small Podenco, of the kind that comes around knee-high to us. Max is male. And he comes pretty much to waist height, which means he can stand up to a table or kitchen surface to grab any delicacy we may have carelessly left out.

His size was another reason to call him Max. Not that we’ve adopted the suggestion of renaming Luci ‘Mini’ and Toffee ‘Micro’. That seemed unfair.

The pack greeting a passer-by
That’s Max, Toffee and Luci, not Max, Micro and Mini

Well, Max has continued for the most part mild as ever. He’s enthusiastically joined the pack Luci and Toffee had already formed. So when they go chasing down the garden barking at anyone with the temerity to go walking past the gate, he likes to go with them. And he demonstrates that he too can bark (deep and loud, now that he’s decided to let us hear him, as opposed to the girls’ yaps).

Max in our woods, off the lead

And, most wonderful of all, he’s never run away from us in the woods. We’d planned not to take him off the lead for the first two or three months. But within ten days we felt confident enough to let him loose and, while he certainly likes to go running into the undergrowth, he seems if anything anxious not to get separated from us and reappears quickly each time. Even more quickly if we call him.

Of course, he may shock us yet and disappear for some hours on some future walk. But, so far at least, so good.

Sunbathing with the pack
That’s Luci to the left, Toffee to the right, not Micro and Mini

His rapid assimilation into the household also demonstrates a political principle for me. Many years ago, I was told that ‘if you want to make a man a conservative, give him something to conserve’. It seems to be true of dogs too. Now that Max has regular meals, a pack, and plenty of affection, he’s become possessive and taken to being a little aggressive towards other dogs, growling at them if they get too close to the main source of his contentment, Danielle. ‘She’s mine,’ he’s clearly saying, ‘try to divert any of her affection towards you and you’ll have me to answer to.’ Very menacing, very worrying. Very conservative.

Even so, he remains mostly mild. His biggest failing sadly concerns children. A friend of ours is a professional dog trainer and I think he got Max right: ‘he’s probably never lived with small children before and he sees them as little noisy creatures that run around everywhere. Unfamiliar with all of that, he perceives them as a threat. So he growls.’

Well, that’s all very fine, but we can’t have our dog growling at our grandchildren. By the end of their last visit, he was getting a lot better, accepting treats from their hands. But there’s more training to be done. And we’re going to do it.

Overall, however, we’ve been more than happy during our first month together. I’m looking forward to the future with him. So it’s with pleasure that I say:

‘Happy mensiversary, mostly mild Max!’

What’s a flowerbed for if it’s not for sunbathing?