Jack is proof you can't teach an old dog new tricks

LIKE most people, I have noticed that as you get older so the dogs appear to get younger.

There was a time when my dog Jack and I would wander around Heavitree Pleasure Grounds, seemingly surrounded by small pups and leggy, lopping juvenile mutts.

Now, as we make progress ever so slowly around our accustomed and well-worn path, the place is quiet and sedate, just old, grey-jowled, floppy-eared individuals and their pets.

I like to think I have worn better than my dog — and so I should for in human terms he is about 200 years old.

While I have changed little, a few traces of almost aristocratic silver in my handsome head of hair and a sparkle still in my piercing brown eyes, the years have not been so kind to Jack.

He was a sprightly sliver of an animal when we received him from the rescue kennel, more greyhound than collie. In fact we felt obliged to feed him up, something that soon won him over.

He could out run all-comers and gave the squirrels a hard time, breathing hotly down their bushy tails as they just made it to the old chestnut tree.

Now it is all he can do to lumber up to the wide and scarred trunk and stare high into the boughs where he hopes a squirrel might be.

We both stand beneath the tree, looking upwards. I don't think he can see anything. I certainly can't — and not because I have the watery eye.

At home he spends a lot more time than of old sitting and leaning against the settee and his body seems to have developed a dynamic all of its own: when he sits down all his body weight slumps down to his rear end.

This means that he takes longer to return to all fours.

Recently in the park, he has even stopped standing and instead sits or even leans quietly against the tree.

This is quite handy as it gives me time to take a breather on one of the benches in the park.

Jack's redistribution of dog flab has presented more obvious problems at home.

He is still able to put in a quick dash when irritated — as he is more and more these days by the paper shredder, coffee grinder, vacuum cleaner, radio, dogs on TV, loud noises, next door's dog, the post man or even a fly.

Whenever any of these sounds, or something else not to his liking, is heard, he rises like a jump jet and races towards the kitchen, the font of all trouble in his mind.

Sadly, between the front room where he snoozes and the kitchen lie a polished wood floor and shiny lino.

Neither surface is conducive to the furry pads and long toe nails of the dog who slips and slithers, his heavyweight rear catching up with his front end, sending him spinning.

Last week he nearly scored a strike. So fast did he shoot across the kitchen floor in pursuit of the high whining coffee grinder that he nearly bowled over my wife and son. Jack shot past and under the table, they shot back and up against the sink.

I, of course, have a policy, much loved by the aged, of not responding to any strange sounds for fear of losing control myself. So, when the phone rings, or the door bell goes, or a call for help is heard, I merely indicate the fact to my younger nearest and dearest in the sure and certain knowledge that they will take the necessary steps.

Jack has yet to adopt this sensible plan, but I suspect that the time is not far away when he will see the wisdom of his owner and keep his head down, his warm if rather damp jowls propped up across my ankles as we both snooze our way to old age.