The Cockapoo Coup

Under Oat Milk
Tall Tales of an Alternate Totnes.

Take one pyjama case, the floor sweepings from a bubble-perm trim, some circus sawdust, a font-tray’s worth of Comic Sans, and a jigger of kohl eyeliner. Tip it all into a bucket. Stir gently while making cooing noises, and let it stand overnight.

Sleep with your magical-thinking cap on.

In the morning you’ll be the proud and beguiled owner of a Cockapoo – a dog so preternaturally cute, many of them carry Equity Cards.

The Cockapoos’ bottle-rocket ascent to the top of the pooch pedestal has known no bounds. We lavished Canine Cupcakes upon them, coiffured their frou-frou tails, adorned them with jaunty sailor hats, and taught them to clown-waddle on hind legs for biscuit treats.

Venerated like glorified glove puppets, they became the performing seals of the canine world, when instead they should have been out running free from our tummy-tickling advances, mercilessly rooting out rabbits from the undergrowth, and getting some dirt under their nails.

It’s no wonder the little blighters turned on us in an absolute horror-show of ‘treat rage’.

It started innocuously enough when a ham-fisted lunchtime drinker in the beer garden of the Braying Donkey pub in Totnes inadvertently squeezed open a packet of crisps. The resultant “pop” carried through the still, midday air – a Pavlovian clarion call, to the Cockapoos’ treat-seeking ears.

They honed in, then mobilised. First locally, then innumerably from afar.

Within hours our town’s roads, parks, nooks and crannies became rivered with them, all rabidly seeking out their prime directive – something by chance from a treat jar.

In the Totnes Narrows, terrified locals waded waist-high in a chokepoint of clambering Cockapoos. A woman, subsumed in the tsunami’s undertow, suddenly broke to the surface, brandishing a furled lead and screamed, “Banjo! Over here. I love you,” only to be sucked back down into the furry maelstrom. A tragic death, but true to the end.

For days Totnes lay under siege. COBRA declared a regional emergency. Satellite imagery recently released by the Ministry of Defence, shows a giant teeming furball engulfing the centre of town, the spires of St Mary’s Church barely visible.

Prisoners in our own homes, their mop-headed faces pressed to our windows. Their black-marble eyes stared unblinkingly inward, febrile with treat expectation.

The town got the fear.
Comparisons were made to the #MeowToo movement of previous years, where countless cat owners, riddled with PTSD, came forward to speak of the exploitative and controlling nature of their charges.

In the end Totnes Town Council saved the day. In a brilliant tactical move, they repurposed a gritting lorry to lay a trail of dog biscuits leading to an abandoned Disney Park on Dartmoor.

It took three days for the Cockapoos, en masse, to caterpillar-munch their way along the A384 and arrive at the theme park, where hatchet-faced security guards, armed with cookie-cutters, firmly slammed shut the gates on them. Totnesians threw their felt hats in the air with joy. At last the town was free of the dog-treat tyranny, and the healing began.

But there have been developments.

Now a sinister Totnes Truthyness cabal regularly rounds up the ‘Normies’ not suited to the town’s esoteric beliefs for ‘Immersion Therapy’.

The star-sign deniers, the sceptical Down-from-Londoners, the Tofu-refuseniks, the sensibly shod, the Costacofferians, the non-gong showered – all are being lowered by rope from helicopters into the doggie throng at the Disney site. 20 minutes submerged in a sea of yummy, canine fluff and out they come, flat-earthed and fluent in Telly Tubby, their arms permanently in pincer-mode, desperately seeking high-street hugs.

Also on the Dark Net disturbing video footage has emerged.

The Cockapoos, closely billeted in Disney world, have mind-melded. They’ve honed  their wily ways. They are ready to once more tug at our leads and heart strings.

They’ve hacked the Disney park’s Tannoy system, and play looped Joni Mitchell tracks. When Joni sings about “Ice-cream castles in the air,” they spontaneously form a huge undulating Mexican wave, then start River Dancing.

It really is the cutest thing.

It can’t be long now before a steely security guard’s brain melts to a sugary-fondue mush and taps in the gate code…