Until last week, my dog was fond of mirrors. He liked throwing poses, snarling at his own reflection. And some days he'd just sit, still as a corpse, like Narcissus staring into the lake, aghast at the beauty of himself.
I often wondered if some day I'd find him at the mirror with a hairbrush in his paw, howling to the strains of 'How Much Is That Doggy In the Window'?
Alas, those days are gone. Poor Toto's tail is not so waggly of late. He got a botched haircut, you see, and like Samson, his mojo seems to have disappeared with his lovely locks.
And my friend Mary (whose name I've changed to protect the guilty) did the dirty deed. I call her Delilah now. And Sweeney Todd, depending on how mean I'm feeling.
We're still friends, me and Mary. Only just, mind you. She dropped in yesterday for a cuppa, and Toto fled out the back door like a cut cat. Or a cut dog, I suppose.
Like the rest of us in this woebegone shambles of a republic, Mary has re-invented herself to do whatever she can to make a buck. She opted for a dog-grooming course earlier this year. On the internet. (Sic.) She asked if she could cut Toto's hair for me, at no cost, as a kind of dog-grooming model. Just like they do in hairdressers, she assured me.
He was looking like something out of 'Spinal Tap', so I jumped at the chance.
When she asked me to leave her alone with the dog, I did have some misgivings. What if it all went wrong? What if I came home to a bloodbath? Nah, she's my buddy, I trusted her. And so did Toto...
I spent a couple of anxious hours in the library, but terrible flashbacks of nightmare haircuts that I'd endured persisted in popping up, doing little danses macabre in my head. I've had haircuts that left me in tears, but not until after I'd left the hairdressers, of course. They'd pick up their hand mirror and show me the state of me from the back, the sides, from every shocking angle, grinning: 'Well, what do you think? Isn't it lovely?'
And, looking like a bird's nest that had been freshly savaged by a wild animal, I would smile and nod benignly, thanking them profusely.
In hindsight, I probably had grounds to sue some of them. Instead I'd say 'yes, yes - just what I was looking for', like the yellow-bellied gobshite that I frequently am. And then have a breakdown in the bathroom afterwards. But I digress.
When I returned home, Toto refused to come out from behind the couch. Or what was left of him refused, anyway.
'Jesus, what did you do to him?' I asked Mary. 'He's scalped! And his ears look bloody enormous!'
'Yeah, well it was all looking a little uneven, so I just had to keep going until there was kind of nothing left. He does look a bit like an alien, but don't worry, it'll grow back in no time!' she beamed.
'How many dogs have you actually groomed on this course you did?' I asked her. 'Well, now that you come to mention it, Toto's my first!' She was still grinning. Grinning like some of those Satanic hairdressers who'd given me cuts you wouldn't inflict on a sheep.
'But his ears, Mary! Just look at his poor, huge, pointy ears! They never looked that bad before, he looks like feckin' Yoda!'
She disagreed, thought he had more of a look of Nosferatu about him.
'He'll be fine, he just needs to get used to it. And really, you shouldn't have bought a dog with such eejity ears.'
This conversation was feeling dangerous, and so I quickly decided I'd walk the poor little muppet, just to get his mind off things. I left Mary in the kitchen, told her to wash up and pull the front door after her.
My poor little dog sloped along sadly, head down, on our way to the park. He was trudging the walk of shame, I could see it. So I turned back for home. Why humiliate him any more?
Mary was still there, washing the coffee cups. Unrepentant. 'You know, Anne, like most things in this life, you get what you pay for...'
Yeah, and the way I was feeling she could be paying for Toto's haircut. With her life. Which brings to mind Pope's wonderful line: 'To err is human; to forgive, divine.'
Pity Toto can't read. He's given up on the mirrors, too.
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