Dog Girl was a periodic visitor to Linda's country house. As should be obvious from her name there was a sort of animal play with her but it was a far remove from the "cutesy puppy" sort of play where they are given a sweet little pet name and play games. No, Dog Girl craved something altogether harsher.
Ordinarily she was something the high-powered in the City: exactly what didn't matter as it was irrelevant to her status at Linda's. She was there to be mistreated and what she may or may not have been somewhere else didn't enter into it. Having asked permission to come she would turn up, usually late on Friday evening but sometimes on the Thursday for a longer weekend. Beyond whatever discussions she might have had with Linda at the beginning, before I knew them, there was no negotiation or expectation on her part before coming. She turned up and was treated however Linda chose to treat her. In some ways " Dog Girl" was just a description of her lack of status as much as a description of how she was played with. Nonetheless, there was a lots of that play too.
In one corner of the garden Linda had had a kennel and run built to accommodate Dog Girl on her visits. It was away from, but in sight of, the house so that she could be observed in her run from the rooms at the rear of the house, but sufficiently far away so that anyone secured in the run wouldn't be easily able to see inside the house. As Linda said, what goes on in the house is no business of the dog chained up in the garden.
The basic routine for Dog Girl was straightforward. When she arrived she would go round to the kitchen door and strip naked, putting all her clothes in a black plastic sack she brought with her. She would then rang the bell and wait for someone to come and attend to her when they were ready. As soon as the door was answered she would have her dog mask fixed on her head. This was a thick moulded rubber mask that Linda had had made especially for her and gave her face a dog-like appearance. Her face went right into it so that it went under her chin and covered her ears but it was open at the back with a thick rubber straps running over and behind her head. A collar was built into it so that when the straps and the collar were brought together they locked together with a single padlock and the mask was fixed immovably over her face, leaving just her eyes and her mouth fully clear. Her hands and feet were covered with thick stiffened "paws" which were locked on and rendered her hands immobile and useless and that was all she would wear for the duration of her stay apart from some knee pads. Whether those were a kindness on Linda's part or whether Dog Girl suffered from some knee problem I don't know.
Once "dressed" Dog Girl would be put on a lead and taken to her kennel. The kennel and run was a very simple affair as I saw one Linda showed it to me. The kennel was a low wooden structure, less than three feet high with a shallowly pitched roof. At the end opposite to the run it was open-ended but secured with a fixed barred grill so that one could look directly into the kennel and there was a longish overhang to the roof to give some protection from rain driving in. The whole thing was just about long enough for an adult to lie down and the other end there was a door so that Dog Girl could be locked in, or locked out, of the kennel. The "run" was simply a length of steel wire hawser bolted inside the kennel at one end and fixed to a steel stake concreted in the ground at the other. A short length of chain fixed to a running ring on the hawser was padlocked to Dog Girl's collar so that she could move up and down the length of the wire, which I'd guess was somewhere between a hundred and hundred and fifty feet long, but nowhere else. The chain securing Dog Girl was around eighteen inches which was long enough to let her run freely but short enough to keep her down on all fours. Apparently, Linda said, there was enough slack to allow her to kneel upright at about the centrepoint of the wire, which was regrettable, but it was a compromise between free running and restraint.
Once Dog Girl had been chained up what, if anything, happened to her was entirely down to Linda. Dogs have no rights and no expectations and Linda was very clear that if Dog Girl turned up on her doorstep the only thing that was guaranteed for her was that she would have the dog mask locked on her face and that she would be chained up in the garden for the weekend, fed and watered. The feeding arrangements were equally simple: a water bowl near the kennel and a food bowl at the opposite end of the run. I asked about what she was given to eat and then rather wished I hadn't when Linda confirmed that Dog Girl was fed on ordinary tinned dog food of the cheapest supermarket sort. The thought of the smell of it was enough to make me feel rather queasy.
As Dog Girl was not there when we were chatting, Linda showed me her mask and paws. As I had expected, the thick black rubber of the mask was flexible but unyielding. The face piece was deeper than a gas mask as it came back far enough to cover the ears but it was surprisingly detailed on the inside. Linda explained that it had been custom-made for Dog Girl starting with a cast of her face so that the inside of the mask moulded itself tightly to her and would not slip or move. The eye holes were big enough for her to see clearly out and also for Linda to see her eyes without obstruction. The mouth was left clear as Dog Girl had to get her face into her feeding bowls to eat and drink. The mask came with a mouth attachment which could be fixed in place to complete the dog-like appearance and gag the wearer with the large plug attached to the inside. All in all it was the pretty gruesome piece of kit and I would not have liked the idea of having it locked over my face even for an hour, much less day in, day out with no respite.
I eventually met Dog Girl but that was later...
