A Dog’s Journey

We thought the world had ended the day we lost our beautiful Purdey. Anyone who knows us, or who has read my book ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc’ will know her story. How she came into our lives almost by accident, how overnight we became dog people. Her death was sudden and quick. She didn’t suffer, we made sure of that, but the days and weeks followed were agony.

We vowed we’d never do it again, would never put ourselves through that heartache. But as the months went by, I came to realise something. You can miss a dog – and I do, bitterly. Purdey’s portrait hangs on our sitting room wall and I look at it every day. But you also miss just the fact of having a dog, something warm and furry to sit on your knee or take up more than her fair share of the duvet.

And so we began the search. This would be a new dog, we promised, a dog in her own right, never a replacement. We saw dogs. Patrick was frantic, almost any dog would do, he wanted one so badly. I couldn’t commit. Every dog we saw I loved – that is the nature of dog people. But still something was wrong. It was only gradually that I came to realise that what I needed was a Purdey type – fluffy, affectionate, strong-willed and demanding. In short, a Brittany, like Purdey. And a rescue. About this we were adamant.

There are not many Brittanys in the UK. If you are not prepared to order one, sight unseen from abroad, like a parcel from Amazon, it’s hard to find one to adopt. So we tuned our attention to springers. There are lots of springers on the greensward where we used to walk Purdey. They are gorgeous dogs – outgoing, friendly, with an ever-wagging tail that I have come to call the springer semaphore. Surely there must be springers locally in need of a new forever home?

There weren’t. We pestered all the rescue charities, who promised to get back to us, but didn’t. Himself, who is the Internet king, went looking, and found a springer rescue charity in the north west. I was sceptical: did we want to go that far? And would they let one of their dogs go to the soft south? Still, at his insistence, we pestered some more.

The telephone call came. ‘We do have one, her name is Maisie and she is 11.’ This gave us pause. Purdey was almost 16 when she died – could we take on an 11-year-old and face the same devastation when we lost her only a few years later? Another phone call: ‘My mistake, she’s 9. But I have to warn you, she’s a biter.’ By this time we had seen Maisie’s photos, including the muddy ones, and we were in love. A biter? We could deal with that. Could we have her? Please? They agreed.

It wasn’t simple. First there was the home check. We nearly fell at this hurdle: the charity didn’t have anyone in the south to check us out, and this was a sine qua non of adoption. Wonderful Wadars, the Sussex animal rescue charity http://www.wadars.co.uk , very kindly agreed to do the home check, even though Maisie wasn’t one of their dogs. I shall be eternally grateful to them.

     The next problem wat that the kennels were a good six hours’ drive away: it would involve an overnight stay. To make matters worse, our van was out of commission, so we had to borrow a friend’s elderly Mondeo.

On November 25th 2018 we finally met her. After a chat with the rescue people she was brought in – or rather she exploded into the room, a tiny round furry butterball with short bandy legs, a madly wagging tail and a great interest in Patrick’s pocket (it was stuffed with treats). She didn’t look a bit like the elegant, long-legged springers we had seen. I had already told the man at the rescue charity that we didn’t mind a ‘sprocker’ (springer-cocker cross) and he had got very sniffy about it: ‘Oh no, Madam, we are a springer rescue.’ About Maisie I had my doubts but it was too late – we were both captivated.

Poor little mite: we loaded her into the back of the car and off we set on our six-hour trek down south. She must have been so bewildered. She probably thought she was being taken ‘home’ to her previous family.

We knew very little about her history. We had been told that she had lived with a man, who subsequently acquired a partner and a child – clearly the dog had been pushed aside. Then she had been offloaded onto the mother in law, who, by all accounts, was not a dog person, and had spent a year or so with her before being put up for adoption.

Maisie came home with us and embarked on a year-long journey. We’d been told she was OK with other dogs – not a bit of it. She tried to eat every dog who attempted to make friends. Our walks consisted of Himself playing ball while I was on dog-alert. If another was spotted on the horizon poor Maisie had to go on the lead.

We took her to an animal behaviourist at the brilliant Sussex dog training  https://www.sussexcountydogtraining.com/ . The behaviourist brought out a realistic but definitely stuffed black Labrador. Maisie tried to kill it. After about a dozen sessions she had improved a lot, though she still regards most other dogs with suspicion. We suspect she had never been socialised.

She’d obviously been strictly brought up. She wouldn’t venture upstairs at all at first. We assured her this was OK, so eventually she would come up at night for a cuddle, always going downstairs to sleep. It was six months before we could persuade her that it was OK to sleep on the bed; now she goes upstairs ahead of us and gets very cross if we don’t follow soon.

She wouldn’t go in the kitchen – well, this was a rule we liked, and she is still gently shooed out if she tries to go in. More difficult to deal with is the fact that she wouldn’t, and still won’t, poo in the back garden. This will be a problem when she gets older, but we’ll deal with it.

Maisie was shy at first. Like most dogs in a new and bewildering situation, she was subdued, and wouldn’t eat if she was the slightest bit anxious. This was a revelation: Purdey would eat – and steal – everything in sight. To begin with, I was tolerated; Patrick got the lion’s share of the cuddles. We think that ‘dad’ had been the prime cuddle giver in her former home: women were to be treated with great wariness. Now she seeks me out, sitting at my feet – and sometimes on them – when I am busy at my desk.

And the biting? No, she has never bitten, but we think we know why she got that reputation. She is very possessive of her toys and treats, and if she thinks something is going to be taken away, she gives an almighty, shrill yelp and pounces on the object in question. We think she was teased in a former life, probably by a child. It was disconcerting at first, now it’s funny: it’s a game she plays with us.

But she has come a long, long way. She is affectionate, trusting, playful and very funny. A gentleman we met on our walk yesterday summed it up. ‘That’s a cracking little dog you’ve got there.’ Yes, she is a cracking little dog. She’s come out of her shell, she’s accepted us as her forever home, she adores us and we adore her. We have come on an amazing journey together over the past year and we are a true family.

Happy gotcha day, lovely Maisie.