On Friday afternoon, something changed in the house, and the dog noticed before anyone said a word.
The bags came in by the door and did not go out again. The uniforms went into a drawer. And on Saturday morning, the thing that never happens happened: nobody left. The car stayed on the drive. The kettle went on and stayed on. Feet came down the stairs at nine, then again at half nine, then a third set at ten, and every single one of them walked past the dog and said hello.
For most of the year, this dog works alone. A nine-to-three shift on the sofa, holding the fort, watching the street through the gap in the curtains, timing the whole long empty middle of the day by the angle of the sun on the carpet. It is a quiet job. Nobody thanks you for it.
And then, for six weeks, the staff arrive.
Suddenly there is a live audience for everything. The water-bowl performance — the one where you drink with maximum splash and then look up dripping — now plays to a full house in the kitchen. Someone is always available to throw the rope toy in the garden, and if the first person tires, there is a second, and a third, sitting cross-legged on the grass with nowhere better to be. Crusts fall from the table at a rate previously unheard of. The back door, once a sealed border, now opens roughly every twenty minutes because a child wants to go out, which means the dog wants to go out, which means everybody goes out.
The dog does not know it is called the summer holidays. The dog thinks it has been promoted.
There is a particular hour, late in these long days, when it all catches up with them. The kids have finally gone quiet in front of a screen. The garden is empty, the rope toy abandoned somewhere near the flowerbed, still slightly damp. And the dog is flat out on the cool kitchen floor, one ear folded inside out, legs running gently at something in a dream. Full. Tired in the good way. Adored, and briefly, blessedly, off duty.
This is the stretch the ancients called the dog days — the hottest, laziest weeks of the year, named, it turns out, after a dog in the sky. It is fitting. Nobody does the dog days like a dog with a garden and a household that is finally, wonderfully, home.
They will not remember it as six weeks. Dogs do not count. They will just know, in the way dogs know things, that there was a summer when the people stayed, and the door kept opening, and someone was always there to throw the toy one more time.
Enjoy it. In September the shift starts again, and they will hold the fort like they always do — but for now, they have staff. Let them have their moment.
If the rope toy has taken a battering this month, ours is the Baby Doll Cotton Rope Toy — the one doing the heavy lifting in gardens across the country this summer. And if you fancy something for the actual full-time staff, our dog-lover t-shirts are made for exactly this weather. Free UK delivery over £30.