ROSCO
Nicola Lacey
Town Hall steps, Market Place
87 x 130 cm
Rosco is a three-and-a-half-year old Golden Doodle and to us he is pure gold. He has the soppy, loyal and loveable nature not to mention irrepressible friendliness of a golden retriever with the curly waves and boundless energy of a poodle. He’s our sunshine on a cloudy day, easy like a Sunday morning.
Although technically a miniature, he’s never been small in measures with anything. It’s impossible to keep his personality corked – its fizzes and the only way to get the stopper back in is to run him round, play catch or produce food.
Tired or not, wet or dry, we are all bound by his infectious energy, caught up in the joy of the moment and eager to get outside and greet the world. There is no better sight than Rosco running at top speed, ears flapping, paws in the air, fur back face into the breeze and living his best life.
We love Rosco for his joy in simple pleasures. Rosco is a dog of few words but those that make him light up are reminders of what’s important – okay so sticks and sausages may be not so important unless campfires are your thing – but the mere mention of his dog buddies and you’ll find him on his feet and looking out of the window already dream sequencing another day in the park.
Rosco embraces every day. He is excited by life, trusting of people, never letting a passer-by pass by as a stranger and not return a friend. He’s a people pleaser, soft as a brush and ultimately the favourite family member for all of us – no judgement, just love.
Lockdown tails…
Like many parents, lockdown found us switching overnight from normal life to working from home, juggling full time jobs with home schooling our two children. Multitasking took on a whole new level and as we all tried to get to grips with being contained at home and sharing each other’s resources, Rosco became the captain of our lockdown ship – our bellwether. He was the go-to ‘person’ for walks out when we got cabin fever, for burying your head in hugs when friends were missed and as a companion to a whole host of ‘new normal’ activities like the work zoom calls, the virtual training sessions for our sports mad kids or just downtime with online baking. He was our anchor; we were steadied by him and frankly he thought this was the best thing ever and took his new responsibilities very seriously.
‘The humans have been working from home and every so often they let me participate in the video calls. All the other humans cheer when they see me. I am the only thing holding their company together…’
Lockdown was not easy to adjust to and sometimes a challenge to be all things to each other without the stimulus from the outside world, but we created our own fun from games to themed party nights and had a lot of belly laughs amongst the frustrations. Together we slowed down the pace of life, taking pleasure in the smallest and simplest of things. We cherished family and friends and, most of all, the furry one who seemed to be taking it all in his stride.
After teaching Rosco various commands and tricks, including some dog agility, we happened to stumble on an online video of a sheepdog dog very ably playing Jenga with his owner and decided that this was the perfect next level trick for Rosco. What followed was an evening spent setting up the game and teaching Rosco to remove the small blocks from the Jenga stack in his mouth, trying not to tip the precariously balanced tower.
Whilst my husband was very enthusiastic about this, taking it upon himself to demonstrate multiple times how it should work, Rosco had already devised his own strategy. He realised it was much less effort to watch his owner, then push the bricks back in with his nose, eat the treat and be done with the whole thing. Reverse Jenga was born and our application to Britain’s Got Talent withdrawn. Anyone for fetch?