Page 37 of One Summer

I click Ted’s harness into place, and we climb the narrow, rather wonky steps to the cliff path. At the top, Ted seems to know the way to go and, as we progress, the rubbish strewn in hedges does seem to increase. I really must bring a bag with me next time and do a litter-pick.

Teds stops every few paces and I remember Henny telling me once that it’s important for dogs to smell the scents of other animals, that it was like reading the news feed on social media, and cocking their leg was like leaving a comment.

When Ted has left about fifty-eight comments in a hundred-metre stretch of cliff path, we reach a narrow track leading to a little beach. He seems like a smart sort of dog, but even so, I’m concerned that if I let him off his leash, he might run for the horizon never to be seen again. What if he tries to swim back to the mainland or something similarly bonkers? With the powerful Atlantic rollers, he’d be drowned in minutes.

I try a test.

‘Here, boy,’ I say, breezily, as he sniffs a pole supporting the metal handrail.

No response.

‘Heel,’ I say.

Still nothing.

‘Look at me, Ted,’ I say, increasingly desperate.

Complete indifference.

‘Come?’

In a flash, he’s by my ankles staring up at me, waiting for a treat, I presume. I don’t have a treat, so I go with some encouraging words about his superior intelligence, along with a lavish mane ruffle.

His recall word is ‘come’. We can do this. We can totally do this.

I unclip him from the leash and he immediately starts bombing around the beach, running for joy and kicking up his back legs for extra lift. He’s so joyful, just existing in the moment and loving every second of it, that I can’t help smiling. Several other dogs run over to greet him, and he approaches them warily, gives their hindquarters a respectful sniff before taking turns chasing and being chased, throwing in a few feints and fake pounces to mix things up.

He is delightful. Other walkers ask me his name and I actually feel a little bit of pride that they think he’s mine. It’s all going magnificently until a surfer emerges from the waves. It’s only April and the water must still be very cold because he’s wearing both rubber boots and some sort of rubber headgear. I’m smiling in the surfer’s direction, vaguely wondering if I should learn to surf while I’m here, when Ted spots him. He freezes. The hackles go up on the back of his neck and he emits a single warning bark. The surfer keeps walking. He’s out of the water now and on the sand and he hasn’t seemed to have noticed us.

‘Hey, it’s okay, Ted. It’s not a man-seal, it’s just a surfer.’

At the word ‘surfer’, Ted erupts into a sequence of savage barks. He runs up to the guy and stops two metres from him to continue the volley. From a distance, it’s clear that Ted stands eight inches at the withers, barely clearing the man’s ankles, but this doesn’t hold him back. He is furious and itching to tear out a throat.

‘I’m sorry,’ I call to the man. ‘He’s never done this before.’

Well, not in my ten minutes’ experience of walking him, anyway.

‘So…’ he says, bending down to put out his hand to Ted, and then grinning up at me. ‘I thought you had a cat, not a dog?’

‘Oh, it’s you – same red surfboard! Sorry, I didn’t recognise you with the rubber hat. Two surfs in a day?’

‘Standard. Different spots for different tides. It’s my day off.’

He’s so addicted to catching waves that he surfs one beach in the morning and another in the afternoon. I find that very weird – because who wants to get dry twice – but also quite cool.

‘I’m always up for a bit of double-dipping,’ he says. ‘Triple-dipping when it feels right.’

He says this with a completely straight face but there’s a swirl of innuendo that’s impossible to ignore.

Ted sniffs his hand warily, and consents to reduce the volume of his barking by 20 per cent.

‘I think it’s your hood,’ I shout.

The surfer keeps smiling at Ted.

He looks flushed and happy and not the least bit bothered by Ted’s evident hostility.

My gaze lingers on his eyes. This man has really nice eyes. Twinkly, a few lines around the edges, but vivid blue. I could sink into those blue eyes forever, I think – and then try not to imagine the squelching of eyeballs.

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