Toe in the Water

Staffies are Tough

Staffies are Tough

In the Newsfeed today, Joey's preparing for the blow mentions the saying, “Leashes are made to be broken.” This reminded me immediately of the greatest dog I have ever had the honour of owning (though it pains me to describe it as that since she was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and, therefore, our relationship had more to do with partnership than any owning - Staffie owners will know what I mean).

She came to us at the age of 8 weeks, the recommended age for a pup ready to leave its mother, and took up her role in the household immediately and with total confidence. This little cube of muscle and bone with a tail at one end and a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth at the other, assumed, with complete understanding, her position of guardian of the family. She was already house-trained so there were no little pools to be attended to, and she set about training us in the appropriate manner. We named her Josie.

With me, she was rough and boisterous, my hands fast becoming ragged maps of little red tooth marks and scratches, the evidence of our training matches together. The wife however had different treatment - Josie would bite but never with enough power to break the skin. And for our three-year old son, Matthew, the rule was no teeth allowed. Such forbearance in a pup so young was almost unbelievable.

The most important thing a Staffie requires of its human is exercise. They are so over-supplied with energy, exuberance and the joy of life that they must have an outlet at least once a day to run and sniff and jump and career about as wide an area as possible. So my walks with her began at a very early stage in her development. And the way to the veld* (did I mention that this was In Africa?) lay along a few short streets that separated our house from the countryside. I had to buy a leash to rein her in for this short walk, releasing her once we reached the open.

I have yet to discover the formula for decreasing a Staffie’s enthusiasm for the daily walk. Put on a leash and the Staffie will immediately proceed to the end of its length and begin to tug the reluctant owner along behind. Josie was no exception and she broke that first leash within a few days. I bought another, stronger one. She broke that too, in perhaps a day more.

And so I proceeded up the ladder from strong leash to seriously oversize for the size of dog. She broke them all.

In the end I laid out some serious cash and bought a strip of horse’s harness, about half an inch thick. It had a loop at one end, useful as a handle for myself, then a long, long strip of leather, ending in a sort of bulldog clip that could be attached to the metal hoop in her collar. This, she never broke, although she never stopped trying.

The great length of this leash meant that it was a bit cumbersome to carry after letting Josie loose to run in the veld. This problem I solved by passing it around my waist, threading it through the loops of my jeans. I liked leaving a length of it to swing from my waist. It was kinda cool and cool mattered at my age back then.

And so the two of us would go for a walk in the bush. For me, that amounted to a stroll for a few miles but, for Josie, this was a chance to run and run for mile upon mile, covering probably five times the ground that I managed and at a much greater pace. She developed several games that she played in these walks, one with the plovers that used to nest in hidden patches in the ground. They would keep Josie from discovering the nest by dive bombing her from on high, swooping over her, and then pretending to have a problem and fluttering to earth. She would race for them and they would take off at the last moment, Josie’s snapping teeth narrowly missing their tails as they rose into the air.

She never caught one but they made her the fittest dog in southern Africa, I think.

And then there was the game she played with me. She called it “Chicken.” As I was walking along, minding my own business, she would approach from behind at tremendous speed. I could hear her coming, the pounding feet and panting breath getting ever closer as my nerves stretched further and further with the inevitability of collision. This was where the chicken came in. I was not allowed to turn around to see her coming. No, my job was to keep going, never deviating from the path and trusting that she knew what she was doing.

It was not an easy thing to do when you can hear thirty pounds of very solid dog bearing down on you at full speed. Only once did I break. It had been raining and the ground was wet. I thought she might not be able to make the last minute jink to get around me on the slick surface. At the last moment, I stepped sideways.

Unfortunately, that was the side she had chosen to come past. She cannoned into my legs like the shell from a naval gun and I went flying to come back to earth with a thump on my rear end in the mud. She stopped her mad career a few yards farther on and turned to look at me. “Never, ever deviate,” she said and then was off again.

But I must return to the matter of the leash. It was, after all, the instrument of my learning just a little more about the incredible character of the Stafford.

This was on the occasion of just one more of the hundreds of chicken games we played in the open veld. There was no variation in the approach nor the execution. But it changed the way I dealt with that leash forever after.

Josie approached from the rear at full speed as usual. I held true to my course, awaiting that moment when she would blast by within inches of me, a wild hurricane on the way to whatever distant object she’d decided upon. But this time, the swinging bulldog clip caught in the skin at the corner of her eye.

Her mad dash was instantly halted, she was thrown into the air and came crashing back to earth. The impact forced a brief grunt from her but no other sound did she make. I hurried forward to attend to her but already she was struggling to her feet. I caught her and removed the clip from her eye. Unbelievably, there was no sign of damage. The skin must have stretched like a bungee cord to have arrested her progress so suddenly, but there was no tear, no blood, nothing to indicate the forces that had been at work only seconds before.

And Josie was embarrassed only that somehow she had at last been bested. She wanted only to go running again, for her speed to dismiss the memory of that abrupt comeuppance.

Staffies are tough beyond belief. There are tales of them from their early days that I will never tell because I know people will not understand. But they are tough as old boots and then some. And Josie showed me that day just how tough they are.

But I never left a length of leash swinging from my belt ever again.


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* Note: Veld is pronounced “felt.” It comes to us from the Afrikaans and, in that language, a V is always pronounced F and a D at the end of a word is always said as a T. There is no such thing as a “veld,” as the uninformed English would pronounce it.