‘What happened to your positive reinforcement training?’ Jim chimed in on the chorus as little patches of red broke out on Margot’s guilty face. ‘You could have persevered with the long line. I won’t have a dog on Prozac in my class. It’s a betrayal of my training methods and—’
‘She’s not on Prozac,’ Margot snapped. ‘I would never do that. But what I did do . . . I know that you said she wasn’t ready, Jim, but it was snowing, it was slippery, she was going to pull me over. I had no choice.’
The suspense was killing Will. ‘What did you do?’
Margot pulled an awful, cringing face, which transformed her prettiness into something grotesque. ‘I let her off the lead, OK? I let her off in the middle of Primrose Hill and after half an hour of zoomies, she came back and, I don’t know how to explain it, she’s been amazing ever since. No pulling.’
Will shook his head. He couldn’t have heard her right. ‘No pulling?’
Margot nodded her head so vigorously that there was a good chance the pom-pom might become airborne. ‘She hasn’t so much as looked at another dog funny. There have even been a couple of times when she’s sniffed another dog’s bottom.’ She pulled another ghastly face. ‘I’m as confused as you are.’
‘Well, I’m completely confused,’ Will agreed. He couldn’t help but smile despite his vow to be disengaged. ‘Blossom, are you a good girl now?’
Blossom held up a paw. A very muddy paw, but Will shook it all the same.
‘Well, it was obviously lead aggression,’ Jim sniffed, which was the first that Will and Margot had heard of it. ‘When they’re on the lead, especially if they’ve had bad experiences in the past, they can become reactive when another dog approaches because they’re not in control of the interaction; they can’t get away if cornered. Didn’t we cover this?’
Margot rolled her eyes. ‘We really didn’t, Jim.’
‘Yeah, you might have thought to mention it,’ Will added drily.
Jim shrugged. ‘Just as well we did all that work on her recall,’ he said a little too smugly for Will’s liking. ‘Anyway, not a normal class today. The examiner has turned up from the Kennel Club. I’m sure I put this in the text.’
‘Again, you really didn’t, Jim.’ This time Margot gave Will the benefit of her extravagant eye roll, which made Will smile. He couldn’t even pretend that it was a cool, disengaged smile.
‘Great news about Blossom’s improvement,’ Jim ploughed on regardless. ‘She’s not ready to take her Good Citizen Bronze Award test today but why don’t we put her in with the others and see what we still need to work on?’
‘Can you even believe him?’ Margot muttered to Will as they followed Jim to the cordoned-off area where Blossom would be put through her paces. ‘You promise you’re not even a little bit cross with me for letting her off the lead?’
How could he be cross with Margot when, if he hadn’t let Blossom off-lead in the first place and almost got her run over, they wouldn’t be here. Not just spending time training Blossom but spending time together?
‘Well, I am a little bit cross,’ he said, and pretended not to notice when Margot gave him the finger in a very un-Margot-like way.
27
Margot
All the instructors were at great pains to tell them that Blossom wasn’t ready to take her Bronze Good Citizen certificate, but they hadn’t experienced the new, improved Blossom. Blossom v 2.0, now with added obedience.
Also, they did get a point for having poo bags with them. Margot liked to think that she and Will absolutely smashed their questions on being responsible owners. Blossom did a fantastic sit and, for once, she didn’t even object when Margot was asked to lift her tail, when usually she clamped it down like Noah shutting the doors of the ark.
Blossom also rocked her recall. Then it was time to show how she could walk on a loose lead and not lose her shit if another dog came too close.
‘We’re just seeing how far you’ve come,’ Margot told her, as they watched the other dogs take their turns. ‘There’ll be no judgement if you have a hissy fit when that Husky gets all up in your space. Your awesomeness can’t be quantified by a standardised test.’
Will loomed over them. ‘Would it be cheating to conceal a treat in our hands, so her focus is on that and not on the other dogs?’
Margot stared up at him from her crouched position. It wasn’t the most flattering angle, but Will still managed to look chiselled. His hair just the right amount of windswept, a healthy glow on his face, while Margot knew her hair was tangled, and the performance anxiety plus her Uniqlo thermals and padded anorak meant that she was bright red. She hoped there no heat-seeking missiles in the immediate vicinity.
‘Her focus is meant to be on us,’ she reminded Will, and if she sounded tetchy, it was because of the stress of the situation and the simple and unwelcome fact that she didn’t know how to be around him anymore. ‘It’s cheating and we can’t cheat. That woman from the Kennel Club sees everything.’
‘Do you want to take her or shall I?’ Will asked as the lady from the Kennel Club, yet another jolly-looking woman of a certain age who liked to wear sleeveless fleeces and seemed to prefer the company of dogs to humans, pointed at them. ‘Actually, you go. You have the magic touch.’
As she walked Blossom to the starting point, Margot’s face was red again because she was flushed with pleasure at Will’s compliment. It was barely a compliment, but that was the effect kissing a man had on Margot. Reading too much into things.
‘Lady in the red hat with the little Staffy, off you go!’
‘Blossom, you are the best girl. You walk beautifully. You never pull,’ Margot muttered as she and Blossom weaved through traffic cones. ‘You are a positive dog who only has positive experiences with other dogs. Ignore the Husky and I’ll let you eat more roast chicken then you’ve ever seen.’
Blossom looked up at Margot with trusting eyes as if she understood every word, especially the bit about the chicken. ‘Lovely focus from the little Staffy,’ Kennel Club lady called out rapturously, as they passed the Husky without incident and their lead remained in the ‘smile’ position.
Margot had never thought this day would come, not in her wildest dreams. But as they lined up with the other dogs and owners, it was inevitable that Kennel Club lady would go down the line and say, ‘Pass,’ when she came to Margot, Will and Blossom. ‘You’ve got a cracking little dog there.’
‘Did Blossom pull off the coup of the century?’ Will asked incredulously.
‘She did! She bloody did!’
‘Blossom! I have never been prouder of anyone,’ Will said in a gravelly voice and he scooped Blossom up so he could kiss her face, though he always told Margot not to do that because it was unhygienic. Although she always countered with the fact that dog’s saliva contained a naturally occurring antiseptic and so it couldn’t be that unhygienic.
He was certainly kissing Blossom now, who had her front paws on Will’s shoulder so she could lick him back, and Margot wanted to get in on the kissing and the licking so she threw her arms around both of them.