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The new pet, the Colonel decided, was a funny little thing. He raised his nose to sniff suspiciously at the cradle, deftly avoiding the tiny pink hands that snatched at his fur. “Careful!” he barked. “Just go easy, young fellow-me-lad.”
Of course, he didn’t expect the baby to understand. Pets never did. Still, if you were stern with them, one way or another, they usually did as they were told.
“Oh, look at Colonel,” Peter, his male pet, said, his usual bellow hushed to a murmur. “He doesn’t know what to make of Tommy, does he? Well, he’ll soon find that he can’t boss him around like the hens and the cat.”
“He won’t hurt the baby, will he?” Jane asked, and the Colonel sent her a reproachful look, hearing the note of anxiety in her voice. Did it seem likely he would hurt this tiny wiggly vulnerable pet? That sort of thing was for Bad Dogs. He had always looked after his pets.
Fortunately, Peter knew him better. “Colonel? He doesn’t even snap at Willow, and heaven knows, that cat deserves it from time to time. No, they’ll be fine.”
They certainly would, Colonel agreed, sitting down to contemplate the situation. Still, it was certainly a big task ahead of him. A new pet to train! Surely, though, it could only help that they were starting young.
Lieutenant Willow laughed outright at him when he tried to recruit her for the new campaign. “You want to train the baby?” she asked incredulously. “Can’t be done. Pets are stupid enough about understanding us, and babies are stupider than most.” She licked delicately at her paw – Lieutenant Willow was always fastidiously clean, even in the middle of a conversation. “Just keep enough distance that he can’t jab you in the eye – he won’t mean to, of course, but little pets don’t always know when they’re hurting you. We can try and train him when he’s older.”
“Now, Lieutenant,” the Colonel said firmly, trying to make it an order from his tone. Sometimes – not always – that worked on the cat. “It’s far better that he learn to behave now, while he’s small, before he gains bad habits. I’ve always thought that we start far too late on training our pets. Look at Peter – perhaps if we’d started on him earlier he would know how to scratch properly under my fur rather than just on top of it.”
“It would be nice if Jane knew how to pet me without rumpling my fur up all the wrong way,” the Lieutenant agreed reluctantly. “Such an annoyance after a long bath.”
“It’s agreed then?” The Colonel wagged his tail hopefully. “We’ll make the little pet our new Private?”
“If we must, I suppose, we must.” Lieutenant Willow stood up, and stretched gracefully. “Just don’t expect me to train him anywhere close enough that he can grab me. Those little fingers hurt!”
“Not for long,” the Colonel said confidently. “Just wait. The little lad will soon be marching to the right tune.”
“Look at the animals,” Jane said fondly a few weeks later. “It’s like they’re trying to communicate with him.”
Indeed that’s how it did look, with Willow perched safely out of the way on a counter and the Colonel stretched out on the floor in front of Tommy. The pair were staring at the baby intently, and every so often Willow would voice a single sharp meow, or the Colonel would let out a soft stern bark. Of course, Jane couldn’t know that they actually were trying to communicate with the baby.
Nor could she know that something amazing was happening. Slowly, stumblingly, Tommy was starting to talk back.
It was incoherent at first, a babble of noise in response to the Colonel’s instructions of the best way to pet ears (gently, and with a little rubbing towards the base where they tended to itch). The two trainers had missed it, dismissing it as the nonsense most humans tended to spout when they didn’t think anyone was listening who could understand them.
But then Tommy repeated it and, when ignored, repeated it again with the threat of a frustrated sob growing in his voice. And in the wordless noise, something stood out – something in Dog not human. Startled, the Colonel looked at Willow and the cat jumped from the counter, coming to sit perilously close to where the child might reach her.
“Say it again, boy,” she encouraged. “Once more, now.”
Tommy waved his hands in the air, pink in the face now with effort. “Pet you,” he managed, pronunciation not quite right but closer than any human had been before. “Pet you, please?”
“Well!” The cat looked stunned, and began to wash her face – her usual reaction to any situation that startled her so much that she couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.
The Colonel shot her a triumphant look, and dropped his head to within the little boy’s reach. The fingers that groped his ears were clumsy certainly, but not intended to pull or to hurt. “Well done, Private,” he said gruffly, and his tail beat with slow delight. “Very well done, indeed.”
Of course, that was not the end of the training – indeed, it was barely the beginning. The child had to be trained in manners – in how to properly greet a strange dog when they were out, in the opening of doors (not something he could reach to do yet, but the Colonel was sure it would come in useful later), and the giving of treats. Of course, the Colonel could have trained his small pet to hand over biscuits and things from his plate, but he decided loftily that this might be an abuse of his position. One did not want to become a Bad Dog.
If the two older pets noticed their child’s new language skills they said nothing of it. Indeed, all their talk was of how gentle the boy was, how marvellous with animals for one so young, of how much animals trusted him. Of course, it was true that even Lieutenant Willow would curl up at the bottom of Tommy’s crib now, and that strange dogs would willingly approach him to be stroked. Tommy’s parents could scarcely know that this was because the little boy had already promised them, in their own language, that he would do nothing to hurt them.
“He’ll be a vet someday,” Jane would say proudly, “or a zoo-keeper.” And the Colonel, hearing her, would wag his tail, smugly pleased with how well he had taught the child.
Tommy was walking now, his small arms held out for balance. The Colonel grew used to leading him, taking him out to explore. The little boy’s hands might be clumsy, but there was still a lot that could be achieved with them that paws could never accomplish.
Peter, watching them parade across the yard one day, the Colonel in front of the child and the Lieutenant behind, laughed and called Jane to come and see.
“He’s certainly got them well-trained, hasn’t he?” he said, amused by the way the boy stopped promptly as the dog in front did.
He would never know how right he was.
Sometimes Lieutenant Willow got into odd moods, pensive ones, and would slink away by herself. The Colonel might have called them sulks, but he was far too fond of the cat to ever do that. Usually, he let her have a little time to herself to mull over whatever was bothering her before he sought her out and made her snap out of it.
When she disappeared after the strange dogs had left – the spotted ones, in more numbers than the Colonel could count – he thought it best to give her a while before he went looking for her. Instead, he and Tommy occupied themselves by ensuring the boy’s room as untidy enough that nobody might notice that his little cart was missing. The longer it took their pets to realise that, the more chance there was that no-one might connect it with the long train of dogs making its way steadily across the country.
The Colonel waited until Tommy was occupied in scattering his bricks as far as possible across the floor before he went looking for the cat. He found her curled in a corner of the barn, washing herself in an agitated sort of way.
“Now then, Lieutenant! No use getting yourself in a fuss!” he said briskly, before adding more gently, “They’ll make it home, puss, I know they will.”
“Oh, I know they will too.” But Willow didn’t stop her bathing, pinning her tail down so she could wash it more thoroughly. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” The Colonel sat himself down, ready to hear whatever might be on her mind.
“It’s the puppies!” the cat blurted. “Growing up so quickly – they’re far bigger now than when I first saw them. And it made me think of our Tommy. Pets grow up far more slowly of course – one can’t fault the poor things for being slow to learn – but even so. Have you ever heard of an adult pet who can do what he can do? He’s learning to understand his parents now – will he be able to talk to us and them?”
“I don’t know,” the Colonel said slowly. Truth be told, it wasn’t the first time the idea had crossed his mind either. “I haven’t heard of any small pet who could do this before either. Tommy is… different.”
“When they start off not being able to understand you, it’s not so bad,” Lieutenant Willow said. “You get used to making them understand. Jane’s quite clever now at knowing when I need to go in and out a few times, just to make sure that the world doesn’t change when the door closes. But Tommy’s so much cleverer than that. I can’t bear to think of losing him.”
The thought made the Colonel’s heart drop as well, but for the Lieutenant’s sake he put a firmness into his voice. “Then we must simply make the most of him while we have him. He’s a bright boy – he can’t forget all he’s learnt from us, surely.”
Reassuring though it was meant to be, it wasn’t quite enough to lift the glum mood that had settled on them and the pair sat together in melancholy silence until Tommy came trotting in to see where they had got to.
“I made a mess like you told me, Colonel,” he said proudly, dropping down between them. Then, realising something was wrong, he looked up. “What’s wrong? Wasn’t I meant to do that?”
“No, you did just right,” the Colonel said, and licked the boy’s face gently – a gesture which made him giggle and squirm. It didn’t seem quite enough, and he tried to think of something else to say – something that might stick with the boy when he grew older, remind him that today they had achieved something great for all dog-kind. The only words that sprung to mind were those used by his own larger pet when he had done something far beyond the normal call of duty. He used them now, trying to imbue them with enough love and solemnity that they would last through the years – whatever languages the boy ended up speaking.
“That’ll do, Tommy. That’ll do.”