My dog’s an accident waiting to happen

‘My apologies again for you nearly losing your leg,’ I said to the young Frenchman as he and his family left. ‘And for making you take your pants down on the driveway.’

The Frenchman laughed nervously. ‘No. No. Thank you for a perfect stay,’ he said, and I think he might have meant it. He was an earnest young Parisian who was diligently trying to enjoy every experience of his travels, no matter how appalling.

He and his pretty wife and their adorable two-year-old son had been quietly going around West Cork looking at ‘la nature’ when one day they came back from an outing to the beach earlier than I expected, and Dave the idiot dog was running loose. He hurled himself on the man as he got out of his car.

By the time I got to them, the slender-framed fellow was sprawled across the driver’s seat hyperventilating. The oversized chocolate spaniel had jumped at the car as the door opened and wrestled with the man as he tried to crawl backwards over the gear stick to safety.

With Dave, it’s impossible to say whether he’s trying to greet or guard. I don’t think he knows. In any case, the French chap was limping. Well, it would be truer to say that when I got him standing up and walking, he was dragging one leg behind him, so I insisted he took down his trousers to be certain there was no bite.

He hesitated for a moment, then pulled them down and stood there in his underpants, looking stoically ahead for fear of what I might have to tell him.

I already knew there wouldn’t be a bite. Dave is so stupid he can’t work out how to make his jaws come together. If you throw a lamb chop at him, he opens and shuts his mouth too early or late and the lamb chop bounces off his face.

I shouted at Dave that he was an idiot, which he wouldn’t understand anyway, and he ran off back to the barn to resume his place under an old sideboard covered in plastic sheeting, peeping out only to watch for the BB arriving home in the pick-up truck.

I had a horrible feeling that the little Frenchman’s slender leg might have come close to being snapped off at the hip as he twisted around in the car. I half expected him to take down his trekking pants and one leg to be all but detached inside one half of the trousers. I know a spindly hedge-fund manager in Surrey that happened to when he fell off his horse.

Happily, the Frenchman’s leg was still joined to his hip. He said he didn’t want to go to hospital, so I gave him an ice pack and he limped upstairs, followed by his pretty wife, who was laughing at him and carrying the happily gurgling toddler.

Later I looked out of the window and he had limped back down to stand by the fence of the horses’ field with the toddler pointing to the black and white cobs. That’s right, I thought, let the toddler crawl under the fence to Dirty Duey and you can go for the full monty. But thankfully, he didn’t.

The next morning they came down still happy, he no longer limping, but when I was getting their breakfast on the table I ran the kitchen tap and nothing came out. The well was drained. It had finally given up after a summer of drought. Or, to put it another way, I had left the yard hose running again when filling the horse tanks.

The BB was furious with me for ten seconds, then he perked up when he realised that we had to tell the French family not to wash or flush the loo. I could see euro signs flashing in his eyes as he calculated the savings on hot showers not taken.

‘This is a disaster,’ I said, but the BB was cock-a-hoop, singing the bits of Hotel California he could remember while emptying the dishwasher of unwashed plates so we could rinse them in a bowl of water drawn from the village tap. ‘Such a lovely place, such a lovely place…You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!’

‘That dog is an accident waiting to happen,’ I said. But he didn’t care. Whatever Dave does he is ‘just doing his job’. ‘What is his job?’ I often ask. ‘Ruining our insurance policy?’

I could see euro signs flashing in his eyes as he calculated the savings on hot showers not taken

‘This could be heaven or this could be hell…’ the BB sang. He has a strange personality twist whereby the more something goes awry the more he enjoys himself. ‘Any time of year, you can find it here!’

He can enjoy himself because it will be me who has to deal with the stinking review. But the French family were all smiles on the driveway at the end of their stay.

I may have laid it on thick the night before. Most guests assume we’re Irish so that gives us a fair wind. I did what I had to do, which was to plant the idea that they ought to turn a blind eye to the failings of a struggling Cork farming family doing Airbnb to keep their heritage going after years of imperialist oppression.

As they were trying to prepare a meal for the baby without using water, I told them how the house played a part in the struggle for independence, and he nearly dropped his microwave noodles with excitement. I may have said IRA. Look, someone once told us something or other to that effect. Then I said: ‘This house has been in the same family for generations.’

Well, it has. Not our family, but it was in a family for generations. They were utterly sick of it and sold it to me, and now I’ve got to make the blasted thing stand upright for a few more years.