Aramco Expats

Uhel

1. Lifestyles
2. Special Interest

Author: Nestor J. Sander
Released 4 September 2003

 Uhel
Photographs by Nestor J. Sander

When I first heard Uhel he was barking repeatedly, each yap separated by several seconds of silence. “¿Que es esto?” I asked the gardener in my embryonic Spanish. José, short, stout, clad in muddy overalls, suspenders twisted over a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, replied in an Andalusian nasal drawl that I had trouble in understanding, “Es el perro de la Señora.” Disdain appeared on his tan, piggish countenance, the small eyes dark with malice.

The monotonous barking continued, so I persuaded José to show me the kennel screened by bushes at some distance from the villa. As we approached a young Irish setter, front paws high on the gate of the strong wire enclosure, dropped to the ground and retreated to a concrete shelter at the far end of the run. He lay there panting, moisture dripping from his lolling tongue, for although the air was cool the sun was hot.

I looked him over. Not yet adult, he was big for his race, heavy set. His coat was dirty, but the rich mahogany that gave elegance to his breed glowed red-brown copper, the long ears slightly lighter. His water pan was in the full of the sun, many dead wasps floating in it.

I asked, “Why don’t you let him out, José?

He answered, “Every time I plant something he digs it up. Some-times he digs a big hole just for fun”

 Casa Hesperis

As I trudged down the unpaved dusty road to my place I felt pity for that poor fellow cooped up for days on end. Selfishly, I was glad that my wife and I were too far away to hear the constant barking. Nevertheless, I would tell the Señora about the penned-up animal.

That weekend the French woman, back from Paris, asked us up for a drink. After the usual amenities, I mentioned the setter.

“Pauvre Uhel!” she said, and explained that after the death of her husband she had been away much of the time. The dog had been given her by a young niece who had purchased it in Brittany from a breeder working exclusively with Irish setters. The young woman had lost her husband and had gone to live with relatives whose dog had refused to accept the adolescent Uhel.

In her strongly accented English, our neighbor continued, “Well, I adopted him. He is a good boy but I have no time to love him. José has been very difficult.”

Suddenly she smiled, “Vous n’avez pas un chien. Voulez-vous prendre Uhel? It would relieve my mind, for I know he would have good care, and I could see him often.”

 Georgette Madeleine Cordin Sander

My wife looked at me and nodded. When we went to Italy she had bitterly regretted leaving our German shepherd with a family on Long Island, even though they owned a beach front on the sound for him to run on. We were both delighted and said so.

The three of us went to the kennel to fetch Uhel. The puppy collar we brought from the house was almost too tight, even at the last hole. Uhel was frightened. His tail, not yet plumed, drooped. I took the leash and urged him to come with us as we returned to the house. The French woman handed me his papers. They were in order, with his shots up to date. His father was a champion, but his mother was not registered. We learned that in a Breton dialect ‘Uhel’ means ‘The Big One.”

We said our goodbyes and walked down the hill, Uhel on the leash. I wasn’t sure that he was housebroken, and suggested that he sleep in the garage on a blanket. My wife said no. It was winter and ‘La Maliciosa’ the mountain behind our house was snow-covered. So Uhel spent the night in our bedroom and thereafter slept on a blanket-covered couch in the library.

As he was still growing, we decided he should have two meals a day. In Spain dog biscuits and prepared foods were not easily available, but there was a butcher in the village and we went to Madrid, forty kilometers by road, for vitamins and treats. He ate everything we offered without discrimination, although fresh beef was always the most appreciated.

He grew apace, filling out and becoming adult. In the first days a little rubbing of nose in his faeces, and spanks with a rolled up newspaper when he sprinkled in the house and he was clean. He spent most of the day in our property which was walled by three feet of irregularly-shaped, boulder-sized blocks of granite. He couldn’t dig deep holes for granite lay close to the surface or was exposed in great rounded masses, some as large as a house. Verdure was meager, mainly juniper trees, some very old with thick, gnarled silvery and black trunks rooted in soil-filled fissures in the living rock. We had ordered truckloads of soil for a garden but decided to wait for Uhel to grow up before planting. In any event it was winter.

After a morning half-hour of “Heel!” “Sit!” “Stay!” on the dirt road in front of the house, we spent every afternoon in the countryside, Uhel off leash, usually for about two hours. At the beginnng of our walk, Uhel raced off, clearing high stone fences by a foot. I followed, clambering over the rough granite walls. Often he circled back, saying, “Hurry Up!” Later on he usually remained near.

But after several months when we had well-established itineraries, he would disappear for at time, always coming back before I returned home. We had one jaunt on a prairie, marshy in wet years, where a pair of storks would stalk woodenly in step until Uhel, frantic at my command to sit, would bark continuously until the big birds lumbered into the air, suddenly graceful. On another walk we climbed the higher hills behind the house where there were a few scrubby pines and at least one squirrel that taunted Uhel by chattering at him. We seldom met another dog, but the ceremonial sniffing and leg-lifting were always followed religiously by both parties.

Adult, Uhel was a magnificent animal. His head was large, broad, with long ears covered by thick curly fur a shade lighter than his coat. Big, inquiring, soft brown eyes with short-clipped but abundant lashes and a few long hairs above betokening eyebrows. A generous muzzle: the nose large, moist, velvety black; teeth glistening white; tongue long, light red, often lolling. His tail was well furnished with a plume of the same coppery red-brown as his long-furred, well-muscled body. A thick bib of longer fur covered his chest. The grace and speed of his running gait evinced the power hidden under his glowing coat.

Uhel made us problems, not always because of his own misbehavior. Only a week after he came to live with us he vanished.

That evening we both called him many times in vain and a search by flashlight was bootless. We went to bed, but overwrought with worry did not sleep. Had he wandered far enough to be struck by a car? Unlikely, for traffic was light and the highway distant. Vipers were rare. I left the wicket in the metal door of the garage ajar, just in case. At midnight I heard the faint grinding of the hinges of the wicket and ran to the garage.

There he was, with a strange wild look in his eyes, and a strong odd odor. In the light I saw that his front was covered by a white powder. He was distraught and trembling so we put him between us for the night.

A probable explanation came the following day. José came to our door to ask if we had seen the purebred gun dog owned by the late doctor for he had disappeared the night before. I had noticed the big, heavy-set cream-colored retriever in the kennel, but paid small heed to him. José reminded me that he and I had seen on our little-traveled access road a Deux Chevaux van owned by a man from the village. He knew that the man had a Cocker Spaniel bitch, for he had acquaintances in the village, even though he spoke with an accent much different from theirs. If the bitch was in heat it would have been no problem for him to attract any dog. If both of the stolen putative swains had been confined in a yard with a high plaster-covered wall, Uhel was young and lithe enough to pull himself over it, the heavier dog was not. Owing to the existence of rival cliques in the village to neither of which we belonged, and hence were outlanders we could do nothing to confirm our surmise

When Uhel was older he left us, sometimes for several days, to satisfy the urge to reproduce. I became familiar with the addresses of all the bitches within a ten kilometer radius of our house, for I offered a small reward for information. When I arrived at the site, Uhel always jumped blithely into the car. Punishment had no effect. On at least two occasions his efforts were successful and I saw his progeny. Unfortunately neither dam was an Irish setter.

But these annoyances were minor when weighed against the proof of his love and his confidence in us. Too, when late one night someone tried the iron grille gate to the patio he let us know, and always warned us of visitors even when he recognized them. Small, out-of-the-ordinary incidents come to mind:

Uhel - Lizard Hunting

One day I was occupied in the house when Uhel began to bark. Not the metronomic bark of his puppy days but a continuous clamor of hate and warning. I rushed outside, fearing a dog fight. Uhel stood on a pile of large sheets of plywood that remained from the move. He didn’t stop barking when I went to him.

What’s the trouble, old man?” I asked. He kept on with his diatribe. Finally I understood that something was under the plywood. As soon as I began to shift the sheets, moving one after another to one side, he stopped his clamor and stood, gazing intently at the pile. Finally only one remained.

I was about to say, “See, there’s nothing!” as I lifted it, when in a flash Uhel seized a two-foot lizard around the middle, killing it at once. I examined the reptile. It was a vivid green, blotched with red, yellow, and blue. So brightly colored, it was probably venomous.

I told Uhel, “Good Boy!” but regretted the death of such a bizarre creature. I don’t understand how it was able to force its way under the heavy plywood and to stay there, flattened, while the dog sounded the alarm.

Years later, Uhel came to us, limping. The sheath holding the middle nail of his right front paw was suppurating. Something, probably a barley spear, had forced its way into the tiny space between the nail and flesh. We cleaned the area with alcohol, Uhel flinching but trusting, and applied an antibiotic unguent. A sterile gauze pad held on with adhesive tape lasted only a few minutes, so we kept Uhel in as much as possible. The wound was slow to heal and Uhel was restive. We switched to an antiseptic powder held in place by a bootee of plastic tape. This footware lasted longer, and Uhel resigned himself to leaving it in place.

We still went out for short walks. One afternoon we were about 200 yards from the house, Uhel at my side, when suddenly he stopped. I too halted and looked down. He was sitting with his paw in the air. The bootee lay in the dust. His injured paw in my hand, he on three legs and I bent low, we returned to the house. This proof of intelligence and perfect trust was touching.

Georgia and Sandy

After ten years we found it impossible to maintain a household because reliable, full-time servants would not stay so far from the city, and my wife was not in perfect health. We moved to a hotel in southwestern France. Uhel, now eleven, soon adapted to life in town. Although we were sure he missed a pastoral environment, during the final years in the country he had become more sedentary. Absences had been fewer and shorter and hours passed in the sun of the driveway more common.

In Pau, four half-hour walks a day and a longer outing on holidays seemed to satisfy him. He lay on his blanket for hours and slept quietly. He became arthritic and told us that it hurt to move. In spite of vitamins and geriatric pills it was obvious that he was an old fellow. We went out only to do the necessary and one day he didn’t make it to the entrance of the hotel. Lapses became more and more frequent, and we covered the floor of the apartment with plastic, although he never soiled it. It was not the same in the elevator and in the corridors. My wife was invalided, so we could not take a house.

After nearly a year of indecision and many unfortunate and embarrassing lapses we came to the sad and very difficult conclusion that Uhel must be put to sleep. It was a heart-rending and bitter judgment. I lifted him to the back seat of the car. (It had been long that he did not jump to his place.) At the veterinary’s door he got out of the car by himself and my wife sobbed.

In the waiting room we sat, Uhel quiet on the floor, reproaching ourselves and feeling more and more like murderers every minute. When at last the young doctor saw us I helped him lift Uhel to the table while his assistant prepared the injection. They saw our distress and were kind.

One said, “He will go to sleep, and then sleep more deeply.” And so he did, but at one moment a convulsive shudder showed that he was sentient. Was he in pain?

The veterinary said, “His heart has stopped. He felt nothing.” I patted a paw. His rheumy eyes were lifeless. I am sure we both mourn Uhel still, although my wife too is no longer at my side. Perhaps he is with her.