To date, my little family have owned 25 pets. We have had 6 goldfish, 3 guinea pigs (2 were rehomes), 2 rabbits, 1 hamster, 6 cats (2 were adopted from
Bristol Dogs and Cats Home) and 7 dogs (all rescues and more information to follow). We've loved every single creature wholeheartedly and cared for them to the best of our ability as cherished members of our family.
I'd had dogs in my family home since my teenage years (after MUCH nagging) and my children had had the pleasure of the company of Jessie ~ my parents' dog ~ in their early years. Jessie was a terrier cross that my parents adopted when she was at the age of 1 and who had yapyapyapped her way along to the grand old age of very nearly 18.
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| Jessica Fletcher |
We had wanted a dog of our own for a very long time, but I hadn't wanted to commit until I felt physically able to poo pick behind a dog with nothing more than a sliver of plastic between my fingers and the warm waste <shudder> Once we had cats, I soon found that poo picking the litter tray frequently was far more economical than emptying and replacing the litter every time one of them decided to soil it. I also wanted to wait until I didn't have the commitment of cleaning cages and/or hutches alongside caring for the cats and a dog, so we waited until the sad day when our last hutch dwelling pet ~ Gryffindor the guinea pig ~ made his way to Rainbow Bridge before actively seeking out our first dog.
It was now very early in 2004, the children were 7 and 5, and, after thoroughly researching breeds, we decided that a golden retriever was the dog for us. It never even crossed my mind that our golden retriever would be anything other than a rescue dog, so we spent the next 6 months trawling the local dog rescues waiting for "our" dog to find it's way to us.
Unbeknownst to us, Fate had decided to play a rather hearty trick on us and had decided that we were not going to have the golden retriever we craved, but a 7 month old lurcher boy who had already been diagnosed with hip dysplasia! The day that we laid eyes on him in his kennel at
Bristol Dogs and Cats Home he just stood quietly amidst the barks and wails and howls of the kennel's background and wagged from the very tip of his nose to the very tip of his tail. We fell hook, line and sinker. Within 2 weeks of Bailey's arrival home, we knew that he had Separation Anxiety and not just mildly, but chronically. If we dared to leave him alone at home he would destroy EVERYTHING in his path and then poo and walk it through the entire house, howling at the top of his lungs as he did so. We worked hard with the rescue and behaviourists and vets to try and help give him the confidence he needed to cope with being alone but we never succeeded. In the end, we just gave in and if he really and truly couldn't join us somewhere, then he would stay across the road with my mum. However, as bad as it already was, the Separation Anxiety actually got worse as the years passed until we reached a point ~ 4 and a bit years after he'd come home ~ that Bailey was screaming every time I left a room and woke up howling every hour on the hour throughout the night. After 5 solid nights of terribly broken sleep, I snapped and admitted defeat. We had literally thrown everything we could at trying to settle our boy, but nothing worked and I had no idea what to do next. In the end, I contacted BDCH and made a date for him to return to them for rehoming. However, they couldn't take him for a month and in that time he had already been booked to have a holiday at
Lizzies Barn Sanctuary with my friend Fionna whilst we went away. As we were living nearby at the time, Bailey knew the open layout of the Sanctuary and Fionna very well indeed and Fi noticed just how much more relaxed Bailey was when he was there, so she phoned me on holiday to ask whether BDCH would allow him to be rehomed by her instead. It wasn't a problem at all and we watched in amazement as Bailey flourished and oozed confidence when he was surrounded by other dogs with whom he could play and chase all day. Between us, Fi and I drew up a very strict list of what we wanted in the perfect home for Bailey, then decided what we could compromise on. However, the very first home offer that came in met everything on our dream list ~ no compromises! He was to become the newest member of an already established pack of 4 dogs who were all larger than him, plus his new mum would be around but not accessible all of the time. I was there to witness the first meeting between Bailey and his new family and it really couldn't have gone any better. The reports back stated that he howled for half an hour the first time that he was left alone and then he never did it again. It broke my heart to give up our first dog when I'd thought we'd grow old together, but a darling friend pointed out that maybe Fate had only ever intended us to be a stepping stone for him until his forever family were ready for him. I like to soothe my conscience with those words and I know that he is far happier and more confident now than he ever was with us, but it doesn't completely block the feeling of failure. He will always be our "first" though :o)
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| Bailey |
After adopting Bailey, I became somewhat more involved in dog rescue and took on the responsibility of organising transport runs for Hope Rescue, as well as carrying out homechecks and transport runs myself for Hope and other rescues that needed the help. We also started fostering for Hope and Houndsavers and had chalked up several successful rehomes before Fate stepped in again.
I had always insisted that we wouldn't have a collie as I believed that our lifestyle just wouldn't suit such a high maintenance breed. However, one day in 2006 one of my organised transport runs fell apart when the end foster home pulled out at the last minute and I had to rush out to take charge of an old collie boy for an hour until a run booked for later in the day caught up and he could be moved on to his foster home. The only problem was, this collie stepped out of the previous transporter's car and I felt that familiar *thud* as I laid eyes on him. He was the biggest collie I'd ever seen and I'm still not convinced that he wasn't collie x Bernese Mountain Dog, but he was gentle and kind and cuddly. Anyway, the story goes that he went on to his foster home on the Saturday, I cried all the way home and spent the weekend on the phone to the
Oldies Club's foster co-ordinator at that time (who was on a weekend away with friends!) and she ended up bringing him back to me on the Monday evening. Bear walked into our house with a distinguished air of calm about him and took charge of everything. My old boy turned out to be several years older than anyone had suspected so Old-Man-itis set in not very long after he joined us. We had just 2 and a half wonderful years with our handsome collie but eventually we had to let him go with a scrap of dignity as dementia, dual incontinence and collapsing back legs threatened to steal him away. He was a dog in a million and stole the hearts of everybody who met him, although he had his moments of naughtiness, believe you me!
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| Bear |
Whilst having Bailey and Bear as permanent residents, we continued to foster although now it was mostly for
Lizzies Barn Sanctuary as our friendship with Fi strengthened. It was lovely having "our" two dogs whilst also being able to help a needy dog on their way to their forever homes so I was harbouring no thoughts about taking on a permanent third dog.
Until I saw a photo early in 2007 that set my heart a-flutter.
I quickly arranged to go and visit Fi as she was the one who was currently caring for the dog I'd fallen for. I stepped into the Barn and sat in one of the few chairs that didn't have a dog snoring in it and then Flora was let in. She did the fastest wall-of-death laps I'd ever seen, then landed in a heap in my lap and grinned at me. And she was no chihuahua. She was a 20+kg 7 month old American Bulldog!! We took her with us, along with friends and Fi with some of her dogs, to Pembrey Country Park. She leapt into the back of the car with Bailey and Bear without batting an eyelid and then promptly shredded the duvet they were sitting on. She nicely walked the mile to the beach but, once there, decided that it was FAR too cold for a ruffty tuffty bullbreed to walk so divided her time between clinging on to the back of my jeans with her front paws and bouncing her back feet off of the cold sand and actually climbing up into my arms. I had to carry her the whole way back to the car when she refused to walk it! Flora came home with us and it was as if she'd always been there. The only bullbreed experience I'd had before had been a lovely older staffy girl called Stella who had spent 3 months with us on foster before going on to her home, so it was a sharp learning curve, but Flora was just so full of joy that she was a pleasure to have around. Our lives were constantly shadowed by the threat of the Dangerous Dogs Act and I was always in fear that someone would suspect that she was a "dangerous dog" and have her taken from us, but I was in regular contact with the lovely Allie of
DDA Watch who had me well versed in my rights and, thankfully, that knock at the door never came but it is hard to live with the burden of plans for "just in case". My girl was never destined for an easy ride of it: she originated from a puppy farm, where she was bought along with her brother at 6 weeks, then they were both handed in to rescue at 6 months; we adopted her at 7 months, at 10 months she had a fit that lasted for 24 hours and made her blind and paralysed for the duration of it; 2 weeks later, she had another mammoth fit and was rushed off to
Langford for an MRI, where a grade 4 heart murmur was diagnosed alongside idiopathic epilepsy; 3 months later, Flora was diagnosed with bi-lateral hip dysplasia, although her left hip was considerably worse than her right. After a year of managing her diet and exercise and medication, Flora needed a Total Hip Replacement on her left hip, which was again carried out at Langford. She bounced back from that operation like nothing I'd ever seen and her life changed overnight. 18 months later she started to have head bobbing incidents and her whole body would be covered in hives. The vets felt that it was an allergic reaction to her food, so she was put on a raw food diet. However, a few months later, my best girl had another mammoth fit that she couldn't recover from and we had to say goodbye when she was just 4 years old. Flora had a beautiful heart-shaped patch on her side and I always said that it illustrated the fact that when I was made a little bit of my heart was kept back until I was ready for her to be made and that it showed her love for me. I now wear the image of that patch on my wrist as a tattoo to show my love for her.
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| Flora Dora |
After losing Bear, we waited several months until we were ready to take another dog into our lives and after discussing it with Fi, we decided that a puppy would be the best fit for Flora. Not 2 hours later, she took a call asking if
Lizzies Barn could help a 12 week old chocolate labrador boy who was unsold from a puppy farm litter. Bran was on his way to us! Flora and he adored each other from the moment they laid eyes on each other and, to a degree, I was always a viewer on their life together rather than a full participant, but she taught him well and he was an utter delight. He had his typical "puppy moments" but they were few and far between and mostly he was a dream. At 6 months, however, my baby had the first incidence of lameness in his front end. By 10 months, we had a diagnosis of bi-lateral elbow dysplasia. At 2, he had his hips, elbows and shoulders x-rayed and both elbows arthroscopied. We discovered that he had shockingly loose hips and something like a 90-95% chance of developing hip dysplasia. His shoulders were fine, but his elbows were terrible. He had little cartilage left in either of them and as the camera had been flaking off more cartilage as it did it's thing they hadn't stuck around in there for very long. So we started to manage the elbow dysplasia. Never did Bran complain. Not once. And then we lost Flora and he became this incredible companion who was always at my side. I started taking him to training classes and he quickly worked his way up to his KC Bronze Citizen test, which he passed with flying colours but was very quiet throughout. The next day we were at the vets as I suspected the hip dysplasia had kicked in. Unfortunately, it was much worse than that as he had lost a lot of weight and they were worried that we might lose him. Eventually, after weeks of tests and scans and cameras, Bran was diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Thankfully, he'd been put on a raw diet when Flora had started with her reactions so managing him wasn't too terrible, but so many more things came to light. Over the space of 9 months, we nearly lost him 3 times, discovered he was allergic to bee stings and had atopical allergies to 8 known allergens, had the elbow dysplasia and then both hips became dysplastic too, although he still enjoyed his training and he eventually became a Kennel Club GOLD Citizen! As he had so many problems tolerating medication because of his IBD, it was almost impossible to keep on top of the pain in his legs, until we had a night where he couldn't sleep or settle for the pain. After speaking to the vet who'd cared for him since that first appointment at 6 months, we knew there was nothing more that could be done and we had to let Bran go, again he was aged just 4 years. In the 15 months that we had together after losing Flora, Bran became a part of my soul and I have no doubt that I will never be lucky enough to share my life with another dog like him again.
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| Branston Pickle |
When Bran was just 7 months old, Fi asked if she could bring a rather special little pup to come and see our vets.
Highcroft are spectacular vets and each vet has their own specialist field. The team includes a wonderful cardiologist in the shape of Oliver Garrod. Fi had taken in a jack russell girl and her 4 month old grandson when their owner could no longer keep them. She had easily identified that Hugo pup was too small for his age and it was easy to feel his heart "fizzing" through his chest. From the moment Hugo strutted through our door, Sophie (my daughter ~ 10 years old at that time) fell head over heels in love with him. "No terriers" was another phrase that could often be heard resonating throughout our house as Sophie adored terriers and I found them too much like hard work! Hugo had only been with Olly for a few hours when he called Fi to break the news that there were four major problems with Hugo's heart ~ none fixable ~ and he gave him just 6 months to live. Sophie immediately offered to foster him for as long as he had, with
Lizzies Barn covering his vet bills whilst we took care of everything else. Life with Hugo was a rollercoaster ride as we learned that terriers were indeed very hard work, but you just had to admire the amount of personality and feistiness that had been crammed into that tiny little body! His health took turns for the worse and then he'd get much better and then he'd dip and then he'd be fine again and we just went with it. Olly and Fi both fully supported our ethos of cramming as much life in for him as possible without wrapping him in cotton wool and just letting him do what he could manage. As we passed that dreaded 6 month mark, we celebrated. And then we celebrated again as Hugo hit his first birthday on Christmas Eve 2010. Just 3 months later, his little heart finally gave up and we said goodbye to the bravest little terrierist we'd ever met, our lives forever changed. 6 months indeed! Pah! Our soldier boy had managed to cram 11 years of life into 11 months.
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| Sophie and her Prince Hugo |
When we lost Hugo, Fi promised Sophie that she'd find her a healthy pup ~ one way or another ~ to thank her for the incredible love and care she'd given Hugo, but Sophie had replied that she didn't want her to, that she'd be ready when another pup needed her. We had to wait 8 months for that to happen, but happen it did.
On a cold, snowy day, Fi received a call to ask whether
Lizzies Barn could take a litter of puppies that had been found abandoned in a cardboard box. "Of course", was the answer. The litter turned out to be just 4 day old tiny black and tan scraps and there were 6 of them. Sadly, within just hours of starting a handrearing regime, one little boy was lost. For the next 2 weeks Fi's life centred around the puppies and they thrived. Fi had a holiday booked over Christmas so two puppies came to us to be fostered and the other three went to another foster home together. From the start, it had been decided that if one of the little boys survived then he would be Sophie's next terrierist so she had got to name Moss at 4 days old and then just hoped and prayed until he arrived with us at 2 1/2 weeks of age ~ eyes not long open, just starting to move, tail just starting to wag. His sister, Casey (named by Jacob ~ my son) came to us to be fostered alongside Moss so that they could keep each other company until she went to a new home at 8 weeks. Sophie and I spent Christmas 2010 bottle feeding every few hours, cleaning puppies, changing newspaper and napping as often as possible! The puppies continued to thrive though and eventually it transpired that Jacob and Casey had bonded too tightly for her to be rehomed so both pups stayed with us! Moss has been to training classes with Sophie and is now a KC Bronze Citizen and Casey has attended several clicker workshops with Jacob where she has shown that she is more clever than the rest of us! Both pups (they'll always be "the puppies" even as they approach their second birthday) had been sickeningly healthy until just a few weeks after we lost Bran, when we discovered that Casey has quite a severe flea allergy. Unfortunately, the flea allergy triggered a full body skin infection and, whilst we've been managing that, we've also discovered that she has luxating patella and will probably need surgery to fix it *sigh* It doesn't bother her though and the pair of them are like little tasmanian devils whipping through the house causing noise and chaos and laughter most of the time.
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| Casey and Moss |
And so here we are, today, with a family of me, Jacob, Sophie, Moss and Casey plus Summer and Mika (the cats).
If you've made it this far, you've probably started to get an idea of just how much emotional trauma we've been through in the last 8 years. We wouldn't have missed a second of any of it, because the amount of love and joy that we received from these dogs far outweighed all of the bad stuff, but our hearts are sore and bruised after loving these special creatures so very much and then having to watch them suffer and leave us after such short periods of time :o(
And that is where we come to the decision making. I know that my heart will never be happy without a big dog in it and I'm struggling to not have a big, dopey dog to snuggle up to. The puppies belong to the children and they are responsible for their care, training and exercise. We've worked hard to establish firm bonds between them and their children, so they are most definitely not mine, as much as I love them.
I have ~ to a lesser or greater extent ~ been involved in dog rescue for over 8 years now and I know that I have done a lot of good. We have given a permanent home to seven rescue dogs and directly helped 20 or so other rescue dogs on their way to new homes by fostering them. Indirectly, we have helped many many more into new homes. So, as I start to make plans for bringing my next big dog home, why am I not thinking about rescuing again? I would like to think that the emotional journey you've just read about will answer that question!
I want another labrador ~ a yellow boy with a black nose and black eyeliner. Bran ignited a love of the breed that dictates that it must be another labrador. The trouble is, this glorious breed is riddled with the joint problems that plagued Bran's short life and I cannot bear to watch another dog suffer as he did. I know that no guarantees can be made, but this time around ~ just this once ~ I would like to bring a puppy into our home and hearts that we know comes from healthy lines and has a better than average chance of making it into old age at my side. I want a boy that I can cherish from his first of everything as a baby to his last of everything as an old man. Unfortunately, those sort of promises don't come with rescue dogs, so I have chosen to turn my back on all I know of rescue ~ all the terrible figures of dogs being put to sleep, abandoned, waiting for homes ~ for the chance to have my special boy. I am quite sure that there will be people out there who think that I have made the wrong decision and that I am being selfish, but I feel that I have earned the right to be. I have given a lot of myself, my time, my money, my heart, my love to rescue and I am quite sure that we are not done with rescue dogs altogether yet, but right now I need to heal through a puppy that carries some hope for me.
