Mac has always appreciated a good view, a trait which has led him into some, literally, death-defying situations.
When he first moved into our home, he loved nothing better than watching the world go by from the vantage point of the kitchen window.
Now, this isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds as the kitchen window is located above the sink, which meant he was quite often lounging with a paw in the dishwater.
The window looks straight out on to the street so Lord only knows what people walking past made of the sight of a big hairy dog staring back at them at eyeball level.
It only happened when we were out, of course, but baffled neighbours would report back. “How does he get up there?” they would ask.
With great forethought, obviously. It took me a while to realise that the chair I kept finding pushed across the room had been moved there back by none other than Mac. The cunning hound was using it as a stepping stone to the worktop.
From his trails of gentle destruction, we deduced that, when left unattended, Mac would saunter round the entire worktop before making himself comfortable on the draining board. (It was around this time that we stopped having people round for dinner: there’s really no explaining away a paw print in the mash.)
Fortunately for Mac, as he lay splayed across the draining board, the window sill was the perfect height for a leisurely chew and so he quickly graduated from chewing things all manner of things in the house to chewing the actual fabric of the house.
One day, however, a combination of curiousity and mischief caused him to pull a most memorable stunt.
I’d gone out to the supermarket and he’d been left home alone with his usual collection of toys and bones - all of which were comprehensively ignored in favour of the tasty window sill, of course. As soon as he thought the coast was clear, he’d bounded up to the worktop and began to unleash the chaos.
I was out for a couple of hours and the second I returned I knew something was very wrong. The smell of gas in the house was overwhelming.
Bursting into the kitchen I was confronted with the sight of Mac, standing on the cooker, wagging his tail. He flashed me a big grin before going back to what he was doing; pawing at the knobs on the cooker.
Now, as we all know, on gas cookers, the knobs need to be depressed before they can turn. However, with a bit of time on his hands, the ever-curious Mac had, through trial and error, discovered the knack and had managed to turn two of them on and was enthusiastically working on number three.
Maybe it was the hissing sound that intrigued him or perhaps it was the tickling sensation of gas rippling through his whiskers. Or the funny smell.
Talk about your life flashing before your eyes. With bags of shopping still in my hand, I ran to the cooker, turned off the gas, bundled Mac under my arm and burst open the French doors before flinging both shopping and dog out into the garden.
It was a scorching hot day and my neighbour had been out in the sunshine reading his paper. He sat speechless as he heard my scream and then watched Mac and my groceries make a slow arc across the garden before landing in a heap on the lawn.
As Mac skipped gaily round the garden and the smell of gas slowly dissipated, my neighbour and I sat shell-shocked for some time afterwards.
While Mac has now thankfully tired of his worktop wanderings, to this day I still turn off the gas at the mains whenever he is left home alone. We cannot afford another Cooking with Mac episode . . . and neither can my neighbour.
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