Dylan - The Flying Bedlington

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Book excerpt

Chapter One

One Month B.D. (Before Dylan)

Four weeks before Dylan entered our lives, Juliet and I decided we’d like to add a new dog to our family. We already had Sophie and Candy, the two Dachshunds who had shared my life and been my best friends for several years after my previous marriage ended in divorce. Sophie was a beautiful long-haired, tan, (officially known as red), standard dachsie, and my vet described her as the biggest dachshund he’d ever seen. Candy was a black smooth-haired standard. They’d been together since they were pups, so had virtually spent their entire lives together. Of the two, Candy was the more playful, her favourite game involved me having to tie a balloon to a door handle, and she would spend hours bouncing and jumping up and down, bashing the balloon with her nose, tail wagging furiously. I should mention that Candy’s tail, long and slim, was like a whip and when wagging at top speed, was quite painful if it caught you across the legs. I nicknamed her ‘Miss Whiplash’. Sophie was more sedate, and preferred to play with a rubber bone, or similar chew toy.

            They were very lovable and very loyal and faithful towards me, and Juliet felt it would be nice to have a new four-legged friend she could call her own. So, one day in January, we took the children with us to visit our local dog sanctuary in the hope we might find a suitable dog, one that would get on with Sophie and Candy, of course.

            The two dachsies had been four and five years old when I’d adopted them, from a previous owner who could no longer keep them following a divorce and it was clear to me from the start that they hadn’t been socialised with other dogs, so they were very selective with whom they got along with. Candy had been diagnosed with diabetes at the age of nine and I’d had to learn to inject her with insulin twice a day, and she was on a special diet.

This was our first visit to the local sanctuary, though it would be far from the last. Juliet, my stepdaughters Rebecca and Victoria spent about half an hour looking at the dogs in the sanctuary. We kept going back to one particular little dog, a scruffy cross breed, who looked quite underweight, but had a cute and loving face and a straggly, waggy tail.

            We made enquiries at the sanctuary office and learned something of the dog’s history. Apparently, she’d been owned by an old gentleman who absolutely idolised her. Sadly, he developed a terminal illness, and before passing away, he asked his family to make sure his little dog, Tilly was looked after and cared for after he’d gone. Unfortunately, his son’s idea of caring for Tilly entailed leaving the poor dog in the garden, not allowing her in the house and gradually she became thinner and thinner, until another family member saw the state she was in and made the son take her to the dog sanctuary, as it was obvious he didn’t care about her and had no desire to fulfil his father’s dying wish.

            She’d been at the sanctuary for two weeks and though they’d been trying to build her up, she was still underweight and very skinny, but there was something about that little scruffy dog that attracted us to her, and when she was brought from her pen to the office to meet us, it was a case of love at first sight!

            We decided there and then that we wanted Tilly and she seemed to feel the same about us, as she indicated by jumping up onto my lap and wagging her tail furiously. We made the appropriate arrangements for the adoption and agreed to collect her in two days, giving them time to bathe her for us and have their administer her first injections, part of the adoption package. They also included microchipping in the package, but because she was so skinny, it would probably be too painful to do the microchipping at that time and they asked us to bring her back in about a month, by which time she should have gained a few pounds in weight.

            Everything went well with Tilly’s adoption, she was such a friendly little dog that Sophie and Candy had no problem getting along with her, though unbeknown to Juliet and me, we had entered upon the first stage of our long-term devotion to rescue dogs.