Bad Dog Steve

When we told our landlord that Steve was going to join the household it was decided that we should find another place to live. As we were recently married and owned virtually nothing this was not very daunting, and we found a small hotel on the edge of Dartmoor where the owners did not object to the presence of a Bull Mastiff on the premises.

Steve settled in immediately, although we were at pains to keep him away from the other guests.

Beyond the rise at the back of the hotel was the moor. Here very civilised, gently undulating unfenced grassland, where small herds of Dartmoor ponies grazed. Below the moor were small fields where the local farmers kept their sheep and beyond them a small river ran through woods.

At first we thought that we could allow Steve to run free up on the moor. However we had not taken into account his dislike of the horse. In his first visit he immediately set off in pursuit of a herd and vanished. He returned shortly afterwards nursing a sore chest where a stallion had planted his hoof. We didn’t trust his ability to learn from this encounter and thereafter even on the moor he walked on a lead. The sheep fields were bounded by Devon stone wall banks, when on the road he walked on tip toe so that he could just see the sheep over the banks, it was not a place where he could be trusted off the lead.

Our room on the first floor was large, with a long window above a broad oak sill. This was Steve’s favourite place. As the ground floor rooms had high ceilings, and in front of the hotel’s drive the land sloped away very steeply through flower gardens, he had an excellent viewpoint. As we were so high there was no security risk, so the windows were usually open. In leaving them open we had, mistakenly, paid no attention to Steve’s naturally aggressive temperament. On a summer’s day the owner’s Persian cat strolled into the garden, Steve launched himself through the window. The subsequent progress of his pursuit was marked by the huge footprints through the roses. Fortunately he had failed to catch the cat but he had not taken into account that he was very high up when he started out on his trajectory or that being the breed he was, his head was very heavy and the drive very hard. We doctored his cut chin and general abrasions. Two weeks later he did it again……

One evening while we were at dinner he felt lonely, and ate his way through the bedding until he had located my pyjamas. In our impoverished state the necessary recompense to the hotel was unwelcome.

The hotel was arranged around a service courtyard. After a Sunday lunch the owner asked if Steve would like a ham bone, obviously he would. As a precaution I chained him to a ring in the yard. The owner produced a ham bone of huge Disneyesque proportions, Steve bit it in two at the first contact, no gnawing, no wrestling with the size of it, just straight into two pieces. The owner recoiled, paled to the colour of parchment and said …”That could have been my leg”…you could tell that they were beginning to think about our departure.

Having a generous nature, and trying to be helpful, Steve did little to calm our nerves. While walking in the valley, away from the temptation of sheep, my wife let him off the lead. Shortly afterwards he returned and gave her a very recently dead hen. We became more concerned about the future and the further tranche of reparations did not improve our finances.

To the relief of the hotelier, and probably that of our fellow guests and certainly that of the cat, after a few months the Navy despatched me to an airfield on the Hampshire coast. Steve’s behaviour did not improve…………..