He broke my big toe, ate the curtains and don't even ask what he did to the children's soft toys. But I couldn't help falling in love with the world's naughtiest sausage dog
Downstairs in the utility room, our new puppy, Hercules, was howling. This was getting ridiculous. How could something so tiny make such a noise for so many hours? According to my wife, Emma, this was ‘sleep-training’ and she was refusing to go downstairs to deal with it.
But I couldn’t take it any longer. The last time I’d looked at my bedside clock, it was four in the morning, and I couldn’t say how much time had passed since then as I’d placed a pillow over my head in a bid to block out the noise.
For the first half of the night, we’d had a steady stream of visits and complaints from our four children. The younger two, Frank and Honey, eight and six, were the first to shuffle in, asking if they could play on their Nintendo DS consoles until the puppy decided to call it a night.
Puppy love: Author Matt Whyman with the family hound, Hercules
As for our two older girls, May, 13, and Lou, 15, their level of teen hysteria had hit new heights after an hour. Lou was concerned what the lack of sleep would do for her skin and May, the sensitive one, was convinced Hercules was crying in pain.
Eventually, the kids did drop off, so now Emma and I were the only ones still awake — but I’d reached breaking point.
Tired and frustrated, I grabbed the dressing gown hanging on the door (which turned out to be a short, silk one belonging to my wife) and headed downstairs.
As I crouched down to look at Hercules in his crate, the pup wagged his tail with excitement. This tiny, strange-looking creature had been with us for only one night, and already I felt as though I had aged by several years.
I’d never wanted another dog in the first place — let alone one as little and ridiculous as this.
For Hercules was no ordinary puppy. He was a pint-sized sausage dog, and what he lacked in stature, he more than made up for in length and volume.
His proportions were quite breathtaking. He was so small that I could have scooped him up in my hands, yet his stumpy legs supported a square chest and a body that seemed almost telescopic in length.
Long-haired and predominantly black, Hercules was a miniature Dachshund with a cream muzzle that matched the colour of his paws, and the underside of a tail that looked as though it belonged by rights to a squirrel. He had a long face and almond eyes.
As for his bark, we were now discovering that a sausage dog makes a noise like no other.
Even so, my wife — and everyone else who clapped eyes on him — considered Hercules to be the last word in cute. To me, though, he was just a low-slung hassle.
That first night was just a taster of the disruption to come. No matter what we did, Hercules slept most of the day. He would slowly crank up his level of activity until it peaked when we went to bed.
After a few nights of incessant noise, we were all exhausted — including our other dog, Sesi, a white Canadian Shepherd, who had taken to hiding under my desk with her head in her paws to escape the noise.
Bad boy: Hercules would set about making passionate love to the soft toys on the bedroom floor
It quickly became quite clear we had taken on a creature of habit. Hercules slept all morning while I was working (which suited me, as I work from home as a writer).
Then he’d play with the children when they got home from school. But he’d wait for Emma to get home from work before going really haywire.
It didn’t help that Emma indulged him — allowing him upstairs while she changed out of her work clothes and letting him sit in the bathroom while she had a bath.
Her argument for this was that Dachshunds are known to bond with one person only. ‘It’s important that he considers me to be his number one,’ she declared.
But, in my view, she was spoiling him.
As far as I was concerned, the latest pet to join our menagerie of dog, rabbits, chickens and not-so-mini mini-pigs was nothing but a health hazard.
When he wasn’t sleeping, the puppy’s ability to get under my feet knew no bounds. I only had to cross the kitchen, usually carrying a pan of boiling water, for Hercules to dart across my path.
It took so long for his body to clear out of the way that I would be forced to execute a kind of folk jig to prevent the water from spilling over.
Then there was the problem with upstairs. Hercules could get up easily enough, but coming down again was an issue. He was too long for the steps and several times he finished the last flight like a Slinky toy.
He wasn’t watertight either. No matter how many times I let him out during the day, the kitchen floor was still covered in little pools of water.
All in all, Hercules was shaping up to be the world’s most irritating puppy. Not only did he refuse to sleep at night, he had a habit of chewing everything.
He gnawed his way through the buckle on Honey’s school bag, shredded the curtains, ruined Emma’s favourite shoes and created three holes in the rug in front of the wood burner. Pure provocation.
As for his other, more embarrassing habit — let’s just say he lived up to the name the breeder had given him — Randy.
No soft toy was safe. Emma insisted this was only a phase. But even if it was entirely natural, I felt we had to get such behaviour under control.
Every night, as I read with Frank at bedtime, Hercules would set about making passionate love to the soft toys on the bedroom floor. Frank had now taken to calling one of them Humpy Monkey, and if it was in the wash, Hercules would drag out a patchwork turtle from under the bed before ravaging it at our feet.
When it comes to dealing with very small children, I’ve had ample experience. Having worked from home for years, I’ve changed nappies many more times than I’ve ever knotted a tie, and if someone has a tantrum because we’ve run out of ketchup, I could have them smiling in seconds. But a randy sausage dog?
Little and large: Hercules and a pal enjoy a stroll through the woods
Our new pet had been living with us for only a few weeks when Emma had to be rushed into hospital. This, it turned out, was all my fault.
One particularly frosty winter’s night, after taking Hercules out for a last wee before bed, I’d got so cold as I waited for him to settle that I filled up a hot water bottle and took it to bed with me.
Somehow during the night, the hot water bottle had pressed against Emma’s leg, causing three blisters which had become badly infected.
Emma had been to casualty a couple of times and kept playing the injury down. But her leg had become so bad, she’d been admitted to a burns unit and the consultant was planning to operate on her.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the day Emma went in, snow had started falling relentlessly, so school was cancelled and the children were all at home, nagging me to take Hercules out for a walk.
I had insisted, up until now, that this was Emma’s job. I wasn’t in any hurry to take a sausage dog out in public. But with Emma in hospital, I couldn’t just skip a walk altogether. The kids would never allow it.
I looked outside. The conditions were totally unsuitable for a dog of his build. But with four sets of eyes on me, I had to venture out. As soon as we left our drive, Hercules disappeared under a drift before popping up for air a couple of feet ahead.
When another attempt ended in the puppy falling flat down into another drift with his legs splayed, I decided it was better to hide beside the woodpile for ten minutes and pretend we had been out for a walk.
Our next attempt, a few days later, took us a little further afield. But still, I felt completely self-conscious and stupid with such a tiny creature. I didn’t mind being seen with Hercules if my wife was holding the lead. But on my own . . . ?
As a car splashed into view, I panicked. In no way was I ready to be seen with Hercules in public. So, scooping the sausage dog off the lane, I headed for a gate and hid behind the hedge.
Back at the house, with yet another day off school, the kids had begun to turn feral and Hercules was still chewing everything.
But with their mother still in hospital, I just had to get on with things. We might’ve been in crisis as a family, but I refused to be beaten by a Dachshund.
Besides, hearing about Hercules and his daily antics was what was keeping Emma going. Anything on the subject of the sausage dog brightened her expression.
Slowly, I started to realise that Hercules was not so bad. And he did have his uses — as I discovered the night my eldest daughter’s boyfriend, Archie, turned up.
When he and Lou went upstairs, leaving me in the kitchen to listen out for any untoward noises, I suddenly had a brainwave.
Knowing Hercules would make a beeline for the first sound of activity, I decided to position him outside Lou’s door.
Up he went. Watching the dog’s hindquarters negotiate the last step, I imagined he’d already made it into Lou’s bedroom. I waited several seconds. Nothing. And then I heard a sound that caused my heart to miss a beat. A steady rhythmic creaking that could only mean one thing.
‘OK, that’s quite enough?’ I shouted as I leapt upstairs. ‘Stop what you are doing right away.’
The door to Lou’s bedroom was ajar and I didn’t knock. But when I walked into the room, Lou and Alfie were sitting at her desk with an exercise book and a calculator.
‘Alfie is helping me with my homework,’ said Lou, whose confusion at my sudden appearance looked set to turn to anger.
No prizes for guessing who was actually making the creaking noise. Yes, Hercules had got into Frank and Honey’s adjacent bedroom, and Frank’s entire soft toy collection was at the mercy of the little Dachshund’s advances.
A far finer hour was the morning when Hercules rescued our neighbour, Roddie, from a snowdrift. The puppy had followed me out into the garden as usual.
By then, he’d perfected a tunnel forward-and-jump manoeuvre that allowed him to move through the snow. So there he was, happily motoring around the perimeter of the garden, when he stopped mid-circuit and started barking.
‘Keep it down,’ I muttered, but when he continued, I realised I could hear a very faint voice.
Racing into the lane, I rushed towards my next-door neighbour’s house only to find the occupant, Roddie, face down in the snow. He had dragged himself some way through the drift after slipping and breaking his hip.
Hercules had saved him. He was like Lassie — only smaller.
When I told Emma the story, she seemed delighted, too — but for a very different reason. ‘You sound much brighter about Hercules,’ she said happily.
I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to the curtains and the cushions, and Frank’s soft toys were all but written off. Nevertheless, Hercules had proven himself to be a kind-hearted dog, so maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.
The day Emma returned home, the children were so excited. Balloons filled the hallway and a home-made Welcome Home banner was strung at an angle from the kitchen door to the staircase.
After Emma had hugged the children, Hercules waddled forward to say hello, but then he turned on his little legs and headed back to me.
I pretended to scowl at him, but the children knew our relationship had changed.
‘Dad adores him, Mum,’ said Lou. ‘He talks to him when he thinks there’s no one listening. He’s even got special names for him — Minky Dinks, The Minkster and Mister Pinkle, which he says in a silly voice.’
Emma had been correct when she’d said that the breed tends to bond with one person. But it just so happened that my wife and I were each in the wrong place at a critical time in Hercules’s development — so the person who was most important in his life was me.
The following summer, Hercules crossed my path on the landing, sending me tumbling down the stairs.
This left me with a broken joint in my big toe, and I couldn’t walk without crutches for six months.
It was as a result of this injury that I found myself test-driving a mobility scooter at a country fair, with
Hercules stationed in the front basket — his forelegs planted on the edge as he barked lustily.
People chuckled, of course. As for me — well, by then I was completely beyond embarrassment.
Extracted from Walking With Sausage Dogs, by Matt Whyman, published by Hodder & Stoughton at £18.99. © 2012 Matt Whyman. To order a copy for £15.99 (including p&p), call 0843 382 0000.
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