Brutus - Moor' "Trooble" Ahn Scotland

           This is about the time my happy life came into conflict with the LAW in Scotland.  It all happened over a mutt!  Mine!

           In Scotland my love got me into trouble.   You see, I loved animals.  So did Tom, my husband.   In our house toward the end of our stay, our menagerie totaled two guinea pigs, four kittens, a huge white rabbit, a Yorkie, and an Alsatian (like a small German shepherd.)    I can’t quite recall how we ended up with all of them, but I can never forget the trouble those critters caused us!

The USS Simon Lake in the Holy Loch.

          It was 1966 and I was a young American bride, wife of a sailor on the USS Simon Lake.  The ship was anchored in the deep blue Holy Loch just off shore of a few tiny towns.   Dunoon, in county Argyll, Scotland, was the largest one of these.  It was quaint, timeless and bustling with sailors.   

                  I still love that town.  I’d moved to Scotland a few months after the ship had sailed from Charleston, South Carolina in June.  I followed in September.   The Simon Lake was a submarine tender, there in Scotland to serve the Polaris Fleet.  

          Tom and I started off living in a tiny mobile home or “Caravan” as Scots called them.   Ours was in a Caravan Park right on the beach beyond Dunoon.    While in the caravan I bought a white guinea pig for my first pet.  I got her at a pet shop in Greenock, across the Firth of Clyde.   

                   We were always over there, riding the ferry back and forth, buying supplies for our “growing herd,” and often buying a new addition to it.  One critter cost me my ferry privileges. (“A Wee Bet a’ Trooble” post)

          Not to be outdone, Tom soon bought himself a real “man-dog” - an Alsatian he named Brutus.   (Alsatians are smaller versions of German Shepherds, from France.  No Brit in his right mind would own anything whose name began with "German"!)

Ugly but she was my Tweaky Mouse!

                 The puppy Tom brought home was cute, at first.  “Tweaky Mouse” as I named my guinea pig, was a funny but devious creature.   She was not impressed with the puppy.   


                 She’d learned how to open her cage door.  She’d scurry around the tile floor of our home, while Brutus, slipping and sliding on gigantic paws, chased her.  He never caught her.  Once inside the safety of her cage, she'd taunt him.  She’d grind her teeth and chirp at him.  It was a game they played for hours.

          Finally tired, Brutus would flop down on the floor and snooze.  Tweaky would escape her cage, patter over to him and begin chewing on his tail.  Soon she was bold enough to climb up on his rear and eat her way through his fur.  He’d twitch, but never wake up.  She "mowed" his butt (bum in Scot brogue) nicely.   Whole circles of baldness appeared on him.  I thought it was funny.  Tom didn’t.

         Then Brutus’s hair began falling out in addition to "Tweaky's" efforts.  Tom, worried about HIS dog, took him to the vet, (spent a fortune there) and learned that his “purebred” puppy had Dermadectic Mange AND Rickets!  It wasn't Tweaky's fault either.   Scots,  I found are generally honest and trustworthy.  

                 But, somebody had “seen Tom coming” as we Yanks would say, that’s for sure.  Not only was the dog NOT a purebred, it had the "plague."   Tweaky was not allowed to mow his nasty fur anymore.

         Big bucks later, and tons of expensive medicated "doggie" baths in our tub, Brutus finally stopped shedding.   There was constant disinfecting of our tub, which was an additional "pain" for me.   We had to feed him vitamins for the rickets.   Plus, that bath medicine really stunk!      So did Brutus.  In fact he reeked.

This is what an Alsatian looked like.

           Pretty soon, Tom just gave him a close shave, shortening his already spotty fur.   He sure looked weird, embarrassingly gross, in fact.  People were always pointing at him and laughing. (Smile.)


                I guess it bruised the puppy’s teen-age ego because after we started tying him out in the yard, he began digging holes and barking constantly.   That didn’t go over well in a neighborhood of families and day sleepers.   Nor did our landlord like our new landscaping look.  Our yard looked like a battlefield with foxholes!   So we moved.

On the left, that Kilmun house still stands. Constabulary on the right.

           After we moved into a house in Kilmun, around the other side of the Loch from Dunoon, things escalated.   Brutus was totally bored, and there were few people passing by that house at whom to bark.    So, he started sharpening his teeth on the nice wooden SIDING of the practically new rented house!   We tied him away from the house.  

                   Brutus then dug a garden plot.   So, I planted potatoes nearby and made sure he couldn’t reach them.   At least he saved me some digging.

           However, things got “dicey” when the Scots started building a Police Station, a “Constabulary” next door to us.  (Yeah, of all the places to build a cop shop, it would be NEXT to us.)   When the workmen came to tar the brick foundations, Brutus had a ball.   

                   He got loose (he was always getting loose), began nipping at their heels, tripping them while they were trying to work, knocking over tar buckets and such.   He ended up covered with patches of that sticky black TAR!   Every day it seemed a different workman dragged Brutus home to our house by his chewed-through tether rope.

  

          That was the FIRST day a POLICEMAN knocked at my door.  Loudly!

          There stood the Constable himself, tall, extremely serious in his neat uniform and hat.  He had a fine mustache and a red face.   He was scowling at me, holding Brutus’s broken tether rope, with him wagging his tail, at the end of it.   Brutus grinned at me, tongue lolling.  He looked REAL great now: black patches of tar, bald spots and some odd tufts of fur in a few places.  That Constable probably wondered what kind of dog he was.

           Mr. Constable let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I was in danger of facing charges!    Brutus had bitten a workman.   It was only by the skill of the Constable’s persuasion that the man didn’t press charges.  If he had, he'd have to arrest me, he said with great dignity.  I gulped.

          My face went white, realizing the trouble I was in!   I apologized profusely and promised to keep "the beast" in the house until Tom could get home.   I said we’d pay for any doctor bills.  (Arrgh!  Luckily there weren't any.)   Brutus, happy to be indoors, took a nap in the room that Tweaky Mouse was living in.   

                   She came out of her cage to see what damages she could further inflict on him.  This time she had a mate, Neil Mouse, and he joined in her escapades.   There must have been something repulsive about TAR.    Both of my guinea pigs ran for their cages after a pre-emptory examination of Brutus.

           My four kittens had fun, though.  Brutus was in for a shock.

          I had previously rescued four, three-day old “bairns," wee baby kittens from the Constabulary in Dunoon about 2 months before.  (They were going to kill them, so I had to rescue them!)   

Not my kitties, but similar to mine.

                   You probably have never had three sharp-clawed puffs of mewing fur scaling your bare legs and your long flannel nightgown while you bottle-fed the fourth one.  I felt like a pincushion.   I was up every three hours feeding, cleaning their butts (“bums” in Scotland) for weeks on end.  They didn't appreciate it at all.  They didn’t wait to be picked up.  Instead, when hungry, they hurled themselves at me, claws outstretched and hung on.  

                       It was like having Velcro pets.

            Cuddly, prickly little darlings, all of them were calicos.   When they were only a couple weeks old, they had discovered Tweaky Mouse in her cage.   Next thing I knew, there was a parade around the living room: Tweaky and the four kittens, following her around single file.  


                   One time I found all five of them, Tweaky and the kittens, snuggled up, INSIDE her cage, asleep!  Soon they outgrew the door opening, and would chase her and try to play when she explored outside her cage.  When I added Neal Mouse, her mate, we had to keep them locked in.  I could see an accident waiting to happen.  The kittens loved to chase anything.

          My kittens had their own room and a cat litter box in it.  They’d play all day, climbing on the twin beds, chasing each other all over the room, sliding on the wood floors, climbing the curtains and falling off.  Always up to mischief, I had to contain them behind closed doors if I was busy.  

                  It was time to check on them the day that Brutus was banished indoors.    When I opened the door to their room, the rascals escaped as usual into the living room where he was sleeping.   I rushed after them, grabbing a broom.  

          Brutus had NEVER seen a cat before!  These little fiends had a “handle” on this dog.  Even though they had never seen a DOG, they knew exactly what to do.

         They boldly approached him on stiff legs, tails high in challenge.   Tiny kittens, despite the difference in size, all bounced right up to my nearly-full sized Alsatian!    I stood by, broom ready in my hand and watched.    If he made a move to hurt them,   I was going to clobber Tom's mutt.   Brutus woke up with a yelp.   

                   One feisty kitten had gotten right up to him and had smacked his tender nose with needle-sharp paws.  


                    All 45-lbs of Brutus, all two feet-tall of him, launched into the air!   He came down on all fours, alert and eyes bulging.

          Then, the kittens strained their tiny arched bodies up on tip toes, puffing themselves out like fur balloons, and danced sideways toward him, hissing wildly.  Brutus was completely bewildered, and fled to a corner.   The kittens, seeing his weakness, ATTACKED!  

                  They went for his eyes, ears and tender muzzle.   Imagine 16 claws, dozens of needle sharp teeth, raining destruction on YOUR soft face!  One feisty kitten jumped on him and glued claws to his face like "stink on poo!"  Brutus had enough. 

         With yelps of pain and fright, that big overgrown mutt fell over and then he PEED himself.   He leaped up high over them and ran for the back door.  I let him out, watching his furry bum, tail tucked between his legs, head for under our car.   I knew he’d stay under it for an hour or two. 

                    The kittens danced after him to the door, hissing and growling like banshees all the way!  They had triumphed!

              Thus, the kittens ruled the roost ever after.  Any time Brutus saw one, he ran and hid under the car.  There Brutus would stay, shaking and whining for hours.   Even Tom could not get him out easily.   Our “fierce” Alsatian was a total coward.  Useless, too.  Even Tinkers could walk right up to him.

          Tinkers are Gypsies, and they lived in tents on the beaches around Dunoon.  They wore cast-off clothes, some were barefooted, but they loved their life.   They cooked over open fires, roamed the town and around the Holy Loch.   

Tinkers lived on the beaches of Dunoon.

                    I'd heard from local Scots that the government had built housing for them but they wouldn't live in it.  They were scary to me.


                   They earned enough to eat by going around looking for work fixing things, or by begging for handouts.   What they couldn’t beg, or earn, they’d STEAL.    Sneaky little buggers.

          They had one crippled man they pushed around in an old broken baby buggy (or “pram” in Scotland).  It could have been a sympathy ploy, I don't know.   His gangly legs would dangle out of the pram and he’d grin stupidly at people.  Normally I would have felt sorry for these homeless people.  Back then I was absolutely terrified of Tinkers. 
   

          Brutus was SUPPOSED to warn me by barking if they ever came around.   Instead, he’d welcome them with a hearty tail wag!  Maybe they smelled familiar and he thought they were dogs.  Dumb mutt!  An axe murder could have walked right in my house with that dog guarding us.

                     Even my white rabbit, ”Bobby Buns” (“A Wee bet a’ Trooble” post) was afraid of my feisty kittens after a while.   That fat rabbit, who loved hogging my favorite chair, and initially “mothered” the kittens, now avoided them.  They thought anything with that much fur must be a mom, so they cuddled up with Bobby Buns often.   

                    They would even purr and knead his rabbit fur with their tiny claws.  After a time, as the claws got longer, Bobby would thump his feet hard and jump away.  He'd thump his feet too and SNORT if I tried to reclaim my favorite chair. 

           When "Bobby Buns" would hop down from my chair,  to make a "deposit" on his pile of newspapers (he was housebroken), they’d follow.   What got to be a problem was that the kitties were trying to bat around the rabbit turds!   Because of them playing “turd soccer” on the papers, I had to move "Bobby Buns" out to a pen behind our house.   Besides, I had wanted MY chair back.

             Rotten Brutus’s last two fiascoes got him relocated.  

           I had bought a tiny, VERY tiny (10 ounces)Yorkshire puppy, which I named “Miss Moneypenny” (James Bond’s secretary).    When I say, “tiny” you have to image a puppy the size of your fist, so furry that we could not tell the front from the back at first.  She immediately endeared herself to ME by PEEING on one of Tom’s Playboy Magazine issues, which he’d laid on the floor.   Yeah, the center fold pages!  

                 Tom was totally pissed but it kept the Playboys out of sight after that.  Good doggie!

     

           Miss Moneypenny was my constant companion.   I carried her around in a pocketbook hung around my neck, while riding my Vespa Scooter all over the roads around the Holy Loch.   


                   Since she was a purebred Yorkie, I had to take care of her long silky gray and brown fur, which grew out as she matured and hung down to her tiny feet.   It was a labor of love.

My Miss Moneypenny looked a lot like this cutie pie.

          
             Every week I’d roll up little strands of her coat, saturated with coconut oil, and tie them with strips of cotton rags.  She looked like a Pickaninny (Negro slave) in the days of American South, who tied their locks up in rags.   She would look hilarious, with her many white bumps of rag-encased fur all over her body.   They stuck up about an inch and half. 

          Well, Brutus had not been allowed to play with her much lately, and had never seen her in her “rag bumps.”   I think he didn’t know she was a dog when he did or he thought she was a rag toy.  What happened was absolutely unpredictable.  I could have killed him for what he did.

          That day Brutus (or as I called him, when Tom wasn't around,  “Pain in the Ass”) was indoors, on probation AGAIN, awaiting Tom’s arrival home from work.     Miss Moneypenny came running into the room where Brutus lay by the fire.  She had just been “wrapped and oiled” and was in her cotton rag bumps.    Proudly she pranced right up to him (thinking she was doggie beautiful).    


                  Brutus shot up to his feet and stood staring at the apparition in front of him.   Then he did the unforgivable.   He grabbed little Miss Moneypenny by a mouthful of her cotton rag bumps and started SHAKING her!

          She yelped hysterically in fear!   That brought me flying in, oil still on my hands to see what had happened.    I grabbed Brutus by the ruff and smacked his nose as hard as I could.   He dropped a very frightened Moneypenny on the hard floor.   She was terrified, hurt and totally freaked. 

                 She PEED, then Brutus PEED.  (Seems my house was always getting a deluge of something.)  

          I dragged Brutus to the spare bathroom and tossed him in.  I ran to Moneypenny and cuddled her.  She whined, was shaking with pain, and I could see he had RIPPED out some of her hair and she was bleeding!  The shock must have been tremendous for that poor little thing.  We ended up with MORE vet bills then.  

          Miss Moneypenny was terrified of big dogs after that.  Brutus ended up outside on a chain.  He was forever banished from the house.

          Well, we THOUGHT a CHAIN would keep Brutus from escaping.   Tom  had forgotten that the dog was a digger.  By the second day, Brutus had excavated, chewed and pulled the wooden tether stake completely out of the dirt.   Chain, stake and Brutus were gone!

           That brought the SECOND hard knock at my door in weeks - the POLICEMAN AGAIN!

           The Constable from next door stood menacingly on my back doorstep.   (Oh, boy, I could almost hear the handcuffs clicking shut around my wrists.)  He was REALLY pissed this time!  In heavy Scottish brogue, (which finally after months I could understand) he angrily, breathlessly, listed Tom's mutt's offenses:  

 

            #1.   Brutus was IN the Holy Loch, which was forbidden. 

                  Not only was he IN the water, but also... 

            #2.  He was chasing the Queen’s Royal Swans!   

          In Scotland, that’s a BIG deal, a huge offense with a fine, too.   All swans are protected under law.  They are “Queen Liz’s birds!”  If anyone did anything to upset nesting or swimming swans, they got the TOWER! (London Tower)  I gritted my teeth.  This was BAD....

          In Yankee slang, I knew I was “going down!”    Jail time for me. (“Gaol” as the Scots spell it.) And, oh, goody, there was one right next door!

                  “Mr.” Constable huffily pointed out the door towards the Loch, shaking his hand with punctuated gestures, sputtering in rage.   Oh, CRAP!   I ran out and saw that darn dog, paddling, chain and stake trailing behind him across the Loch, as he chased after a flock of hysterical white swans.   

                   What a DUMB DOG!  Not only could he NOT catch them, but ALSO I knew exactly what was going to happen next.

          I sped down the driveway, crossed the narrow road to the low rock wall bordering the Loch, and leaned over it.  Yelling his name, I tried to call Brutus back to me.   


               He completely ignored me.  That Sh_t!    Man, was I going to KILL Tom for this.

Better not "mess" with the Queen's swans!

           I ran back up to the house and grabbed the nice beef STEAK we’d paid a fortune for and had saved for a special dinner (“tea”).   I ran back down to the Loch where the Constable was standing, rather upset.   Brutus was about 100 yards out now, and the swans were swimming just beyond his reach, honking loudly.   

          He was paddling excitedly on toward them, despite my pleas, totally ignoring that juicy steak.   I secretly wanted that dang mutt to DROWN. 

                        The swans had exactly the same idea! 

 

           Suddenly, they spun around and ATTACKED him!  Pecking with their iron-sharp beaks, these 25-lb birds nailed that dog but good!   He immediately went under, came up yelping in pain, sputtering, and fast as he could, headed for the shore.    I dropped my juicy steak while climbing over the wall!   Gingerly, I waded into the shallow waters of the icy cold Holy Loch.  

          The Constable stood arms folded, watching the scene with a stern frown. 


                         I imagined I saw him smirking.

          As soon as Brutus got within grabbing range, I lunged out and got him.  He tried to escape me!  The swans continued their attack, all the way onto to the shore.  Now, they were after ME!  I tried to lug one wet, heavy and struggling Brutus up out of the water.  I was cursing loudly.  The swans followed us!   


          They struck at my legs and one connected with a razor sharp bill.   OUCH!  That hurt!  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Constable was grinning.  (When he caught me looking at him, he instantly put on his serious frown again.)

          About then, I wanted to throw them BOTH in the Loch – dog and Constable!  Let those swans peck off their "jewels!!"

         Well, the Constable finally came down to help me, blew his whistle loudly and waved his baton, scaring the swans off.  They retreated and he helped me get Brutus over the rock wall and up the driveway.  It took both of us to drag that stinking, wet, bleeding, resisting pooch into the garage.  He had mud and water on his clean uniform, which he brushed off with disgust.

          The Constable then impaled me with his most serious look.   He grimly said he would have to “speak” with my husband when he arrived.   I could already hear the gaol (jail) doors clanging shut on me!  Wet, dirty, with shoes filled with mud, and bleeding from a nasty swan peck, I stormed into my house.  I slammed that door hard!

          Yes, I DEFINITELY was going to KILL Tom because of that dog.

           Brutus cowered in the garage.  I had lost our expensive, would-have-been-yummy beef steak for our dinner.   My leg was bleeding, my shoes were ruined, and my clothes were soaked.  You could almost see the steam coming out of the top of my head I was so pissed!  


                Tom came home shortly.  As soon as his feet crossed the door sill, he was INSTANTLY sent over to see the Constable.   I pushed him back out the door so fast his head spun around.  You should have seen the shock on his face when I told him the CONSTABLE wanted to "speak" to him.

          An hour later he came home, red faced.    Brutus had TO GO!   Between “molesting the workmen” at the construction site, and today, “attacking the Royal Swans,” the Constable was adamant that we had to find him a NEW home, ... or move ourselves.    (Attacking? Wait, they attacked HIM! Not a swan was even ruffled.) 

           In Scotland, however, a Constable's word rules.  Tom hung his head.  HIS precious dog was a "goner" as we Yanks say.

           Several beers later, and several British pounds later, at the Vet’s office, (while he was stitching up the mutt’s punctured back) we asked him for advice.   How do you unload a pesky, useless dog like Brutus?  Our mutt was so ugly, so unmanageable, nobody would buy him.   

           The very nice Scottish Vet (whom we were making rich over the last year) told us of some Highland farmers up this one road in the Highlands ("in the boonies" as Yanks say) who might want him.  We put Brutus in our car and took off in that direction.

         Well, it ended up that we had to PAY them to take Brutus off our hands!

         I was relieved when we came home minus Brutus.  The Constable was happy.  The kittens and "Miss Moneypenny" were blissful.  Tom was miserable.  Plus he was “in the dog house” with me, as Yanks say, for all the trouble that mutt had caused.  It served him right for bringing that mangy hound home in the first place.   "What goes 'round, comes 'round" is my saying for that.

         Somewhere for years after, I imagined Brutus (with a Scottish name now) chewing, digging and barking his head off, way up in the beautiful highlands of Scotland.

                          And ONLY the sheep cared.

                                         ************

Soon, you will learn how my kittens almost got me arrested.

Many thanks to Dougie MacDonald for the ship photo, and the Blackwoods who run Facebook Dunoon, Argyll, Scotland page for the photo of Kilmun used here.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000616113125