No

Not all dogs wear capes

Claude owns two suits to protect her against the elements and mud, when we walk. One is turquoise and slim fit, and I avoid it because if you’ve ever tried to wrestle yourself into a wetsuit that’s one size too small, you’ll understand why. The other suit is a size up: orange, baggy, more like a pair of workman’s overalls. She tolerates that one, registering her displeasure by stubbornly holding one paw off the ground as I try to manoeuvre her into it.

Last week she was wearing the orange suit when, about ten minutes into our walk, her back legs came flying out of it, as they always do. Suddenly she was tearing around the park wearing what was, essentially, a cape. It doesn’t bother her. If anything, it makes her run faster, and makes me smile. Two good reasons to continue with bad-weather fancy dress. It also saves me from washing mud off a dog every morning when I could instead be writing about washing mud off a dog every morning.

The first time someone said, ‘Oh, your dog’s coat is far too big!’ I felt like a bad mother who’d had the audacity to wrap her newborn in a man’s ski jacket. Then I thought: oh come on - it’s a dog in a cape. Then someone else said it. By the third person, I decided I wasn’t coming back to this park ever again without Claude wearing a cape simply because it bothered the sort of people who are bothered by dogs wearing capes.

And that was that. A small, satisfying act of low-stakes obstinacy.

Until the other day, when a small dog got hold of the back of Claude’s cape and dragged her several feet across the park. She wasn’t hurt, or distressed – imagine someone grabbing your jumper sleeve and towing you across the room. Annoying.

Then two diminutive elderly Scottish ladies (I know because of what they shouted next) cried out, ‘Donal! Stop abusing the wee orange doggy!’

Honestly, it was a grim morning – but Donal and the diminutive Scots did make me smile. I’m sure Claude too. I felt more vindicated than ever in my decision to dress her in a cape.

And it was this slightly ridiculous moment that made me wonder: is there a better feeling than vindication?

The journey toward a good old-fashioned vindication often starts with a ‘No’. A small word with a surprising amount of heft behind it, quite unlike Wee Donal. ‘No’ can feel like a door slammed shut, like someone had taken one look at your plans for capes, or otherwise, and decided, quite confidently, that they are going nowhere. ‘No’ can deflate, diminish and derail your dreams – if you let it.

But, with its rocket booster of oppositional energy, ‘No’ is also a provocation.

I don’t mean the obvious kind of ‘No’ like ‘No, you cannot spray-paint your name and address on the side of Big Ben.’ I mean the insidious kind: the ‘No’ that suggests whatever you are proposing is not right, or otherwise.

Sit in the morose pond of rejection, sure. Then look at whether they had a point. Then, if you still believe in your proposition, do it anyway - because you, my friend, are stubborn as a mule. And this is the crucial part in the journey toward vindication: you don’t wait for permission.

You do it anyway. Slowly, sometimes. Quietly, over months and sometimes years. And then it arrives, just a small private recognition that you were right all along, else you were right to keep going.

Otherwise you plan, you execute and you imagine that moment where the thing you were told you couldn’t do is not only done, but undeniable. The moment you race up on the inside lane, cape flying out behind you, dust and sparks cresting the edges of your Pirelli tyres coming in at first place in The Vindication Races. Tell me a moment better than that!