Big Dog Training

Wayne Dean-Richards has shared 18 poems for us to publish during 2023. The collection is called It's a Mad World, But Funny. Eventually there will be a free, downloadable PDF of all the poems and a planned A6 compendium too. (Links to all of the poems way down the page.)

big dog training

we’ve taken her
to the big dog training group
for the first time.

it’s in a church hall
with, depending on your view,
very little or enormous evidence of god.

the trainer snarls
at us
as if he, too, is a big dog.

He seems suspicious,
and even more so when I tell him
our dog’s name is Brute.

we like poodles.
“Brute?” the trainer says.
that’s all,

doesn’t
have to say more,
because the expression

on his cloud-grey face
says it for him.
he tries to talk us

out of joining big dog club,
but we insist Brute has outgrown
small dog club.

he thinks for a minute,
then his face lights up -
sort of.

there’s a club
that’d be perfect
for us he tells us.

it’s run by a Mrs Guest.
it’s for
intermediate dogs.

Brute barks to show she
doesn’t like being thought of as
an intermediate dog

so, we dig our heels in
and against his better judgement
the trainer lets us stay.

we feel victorious -
despite the nearby sneers of those with
bigger dogs than Brute -

until Brute has
an accident that the trainer

steps in.

“Out!” he yells.
but we
were already gone.

and if such a thing
was possible,
Brute was grinning.

© Wayne Dean-Richards

Buy A Mad World But Funny from our new otherwise quite empty shop here

Download a PDF version for free here 

It's A Mad World But Funny (complete) 

1. a father's advice to a son being interviewed to work on the Coventry Ring Road - 1958
   
2. a shopping list and Lowry
3. alone
4. big dog training
5. buying boxer shorts in next
6. lanyard life
7. melancholy
8. snowman
9. this house
10. fight in an art gallery
11. you cunts
12. road rage
13. different face
14. Dostoyevsky didn't have to put up with this
15. the cleaner
16. bailout
17. glue
18. are you