About Lister, the wickedest dog in the world

Lister’s strange arrival

Lister was a dog who stumbled into my life in October 1991. It was a very wet Saturday morning and I was looking after the Abbey Gallery, a gallery run by a co-operative of artists that included my ex, Stephen. I became aware of a dog howling, sounding very distressed and looked outside to see a wretched looking creature running around outside, looking into shops for its owner. After fifteen minutes or so, it was clear that the dog was either lost or abandoned. I managed to coax the dog up into the gallery, so it could warm up. When Stephen turned up at the Gallery, he agreed to take the dog down to the Police Station on the other side of town. We borrowed a skipping rope from the sports shop next door to act as a lead and Stephen took the dog away. Half an hour later, he returned in tears, explaining that if the dog hadn’t been claimed after a week, it would be put down.

Over the remainder of the weekend, we discussed the poor animal. We’d decided some time earlier that when we moved into the house we were buying, we would look for a dog. We had three weeks to go before moving. Should we ‘adopt’ this dog? We decided that we would and we also decided to name him Lister, after a character, Graham Lister, on Vic Reeve’s Big Night Out, one of my favourite television programmes. Having made the decision, we were then on tenterhooks wondering if anyone had claimed the dog. By Thursday, no-one had, so Stephen went off to the Police Station to pick the dog up. On the way home from work, I bought him a basket, food bowls and the relevant food.

Wickedness!

Lister took to us straight away. He had been well trained and was both obedient and good natured. Having evidently been abandoned, he was very neurotic about being left. He didn’t like to be left on his own and if he couldn’t see us when we took him out for walkies, he would run around frantically looking for us. Sometimes – and perhaps a bit cruelly – I would hide in long grass or behind a tree and jump out to surprise him.

He soon revealed his naughty side. The main thing he would do was go through the rubbish bin in the kitchen, usually overnight. He never seemed to eat any of the scraps, though. It was as if he had got part of the way through his devilry and suddenly had an attack of guilt. We began to suspect that he’d been brought up a Roman Catholic. According to the vet, he was over three years old when we found him, so (in doggy tems) the Jesuits had probably long since finished with him.

Devil Dog

We moved into the house in November 1991, which was in a nicer part of Chester – Hoole – and where there was a big park for him to run around off his lead. There were other places to walk, too, especially along the canal. Unlike any other dog I’ve known, though, Lister had a complete aversion to water. He would not go for a swim. Nor would he happily submit to a bath. We once managed to get him into the sea (in Rhyl, of all places), but that was by throuwing sticks for him to chase. When he was quite elderly, wo got him into a lake at Delamere Forest, again by throwing sticks.

He still used to get the Devil in him. During our first Christmas in the house, Stephen had only been able to get a turkey that would have fed a family of eight, so we had only part of one of the breasts. We went out to a party that night. Arriving home very late, we found that Lister had somehow managed to open the ’fridge door and pull the turkey out onto the floor. He’d nibbled away at one of the knees and then stopped. Once again, I suspect he'd suddenly worried about what the Baby Jesus would think of him and retired, full of guilt, to his bed. We still had to throw the turkey out, though, as we didn’t know how much of it he’d licked.

Evil… evil… evil…

Lister loved sticks. The bigger the better. He was a real size queen that way. If he had a small stick in his mouth and I found a bigger one, he’d drop his stick instantly and want mine. It didn’t matter how much bigger my stick was – it was just the fact that it was bigger. Sometimes he’d want the most unfeasibly large stick, even if it were the size of a small sapling. Not being an especially big dog, though, he wouldn’t be able to pick up the stick properly and he’d end up dragging it along, his head pulled down to one side. He’d then try to get this tree through narrow gates and wonder what was holding him up. Sometimes, he would turn round to see if walking backwards would help. It never did.

There were other things that he loved. His favourite toy was a thing that we always called his “prolapse”, because that’s what it looked like. Apparently, it’s called a “kong”, but I didn’t know that and nor did Lister. “Prolapse” eventually came to mean any plastic dog toy to Lister. I suspect that he’s the only dog in history to have repsonded so positively to the word!

Dotage

As Lister grew older, so his hearing began to go. At least, that’s how it seemed. He developed a fascination for certain words. “Chopsticks” and “haardrucker” were particular favourites. His vocabulary became ever more eccentric. He knew the difference between a “Princess Margaret” and a “Lady Di”; in case you don’t, the former is a cow or pig hide doggy chew, the latter is a dry, bone-shaped doggy biscuit. Obvious, really.

Despite his apparent deafness, he would still be woken up by the sound of the ’fridge door opening or by a whispered invitation to go for “walkies”… He did develop a weak bladder towards the end and he’d sometimes wet his bed in his sleep, although when he was awake, he would let us know that he needed to be let out. This was how we found that he was occasionally still sneaking on to the sofa to sleep while we were out. Several times we returned home to find to cover strangely damp. These were the only things that really showed he was getting old, though. Just a few weeks before he died, we took him on a long walk to Ewloe Castle in North Wales. He climbed to the top of the castle, chased sticks and had a generally good time.

When the end came, it was very quick. One Saturday, he had difficulty sitting up on his bed and his balance seemed to have gone. His head kept lolling from side to side and he wasn’t interested in going outside. I made him his favourite food – fish, egg and rice – but he didn’t even seem to want that. On the Monday morning he was no better, so Bahkti and I took him to the vet, who told us that there was nothing he could do and that it would be kindest to put him down. It was a horrible moment but I knew that the vet wouldn’t recommend it unless it were necessary. So Lister died on 21 June 2003, aged something like 15 or 16.