Penny The Railway Pup

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Book excerpt

Chapter 1

Before Penny

It was a normal Autumn afternoon, and I arrived at the vet with our cairn terrier, Charlie, sadly no longer with us, for his annual booster vaccination. The sun was shining, and the vet’s waiting room was almost deserted as Charlie and I entered and announced our arrival to the receptionist. Let me explain that because Juliet and I owned a number of rescued dogs - I think we had eight or nine at the time this occurred - we knew all the staff at the surgery and were on first name terms with them. On this particular day, we were booked in by Lisa, who smiled warmly and asked if she could have a word with me before I left that afternoon. Intrigued, I agreed to see her on our way out, wondering what she might want to tell me.

            Charlie was soon attended to and we exited the treatment room and made our way to the reception desk to pay for his injection and, of course, to find out what Lisa had to say to me. There were no other patients waiting as I paid Charlie’s bill. Lisa passed me my receipt for the fee and smiled at me again. What was she smiling at? I wondered.

            “Right then, Lisa, what have you got to tell me?” I asked.

            Still smiling, Lisa replied, “I don’t suppose you know anyone who might be prepared to give a home to a little terrier do you?”

            I quickly realised why Lisa had had that smile plastered on her face from the moment I’d walked in through the surgery doors. Like everyone at the practice, she was well aware that Juliet and I had a number of rescued dogs at home and obviously felt we would be amenable to taking in another one.

            “I don’t know, Lisa,” I responded. “I can’t really say much without knowing anything about the dog, and of course, Juliet would have a say in any new adoptions, too. What can you tell me about the dog?”

            Lisa then surprised me by explaining that the dog was currently in her care, but that she was seeking a permanent home for the terrier.

            “I have her at home,” she went on, “but I have three of my own dogs in the house and can’t really fit another one in. She’s living outside in a pen, alongside my breeding dogs at present.”

            Lisa explained that she had a purpose-built area in her back yard where she bred Dogue de Bordeauxs. The terrier was taking up one of the pens at present but would be much better living in a home with a nice family.

            “I’ve been thinking of asking you for a while but this is the first chance I’ve had,” she said. My house itself isn’t very big, so I really can’t keep her inside, or we’d be overcrowded.”

            “What kind of dog is she?” was my next question.

            “She’s a Jack Russell cross.”

            “And how come she’s ended up with you, and what’s her name? I’m going to have to talk about this with Juliet, so I’m not making any promises.”

            “I understand that, but I’m sure if you came and had a look at her, you’d be happy with her. She doesn’t really have a name, but I call her Pancake because she was brought to me on Pancake Day.”

 For non-UK readers, I should explain that ‘Pancake Day’ is actually Shrove Tuesday, once of religious significance, though rarely celebrated as such in the UK nowadays. It is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when pancakes are traditionally served.

“Okay, so how did you come to get her?”

“It’s a long story,” said Lisa, who went on to explain where she lived, so I’d have a better idea of what she was about to tell me. “Until recently there was a gypsy encampment on the waste ground near the railway station. One tea-time, there was a knock at my door and two little girls were standing there, maybe eight to ten years old, with the older of the two holding a puppy in her arms. You could tell they were sisters just by looking at them. They told me they’d been out playing and saw that the gypsies had gone so they went to take a look in the field near the station where they’d camped, in case they’d left anything behind. From the scruffy state of their clothes, their white socks covered in mud and muck, and their dirty faces, I could tell they’d had a really good time exploring the old gypsy site.”

“And they found the puppy?”

“Not at first. They told me they had looked all-round the site where the gypsies had parked their trucks and caravans etc. but had found nothing interesting, at least nothing that would attract a couple of young junior school girls. Then, they walked towards the railway station, and on the other side of the fence, they saw something moving a few yards along the tracks. They soon realised that what they were seeing was a little dog. They called out to the puppy but, although it was moving, it didn’t make any attempt to go to them. They followed the fence and when they got closer, they realised that the puppy had a rope round its neck and that the rope was caught up on the track. The sisters realised that the poor little thing was stuck and could do nothing to free itself. They were also intelligent enough to realise that, if a train came along, the poor little puppy would probably be hit and killed by the engine. Although they knew it was a dangerous thing to do, as well as being against the law to trespass on the tracks, the two girls climbed over the fence and ran to the puppy, who was excited to see them. They told me it took them a couple of minutes to free the puppy from the track, and the elder girl picked her up and cuddled and reassured her. They couldn’t tell if the little dog had run away from the gypsy camp and got trapped accidentally, or if the gypsies had abandoned her, and left her tied to the railway track.”

“That’s horrific,” I interrupted. “But, how did they know to take her to your house?”

“A lot of the local kids know me, and come to see my horses quite often. They know I work for a vet and that I breed dogs. They call me, ‘the vet lady.’ So, the girls struggled between them to carry her to my house and knocked on my door.”

This was the first I’d heard of Lisa owning horses, so I presumed she must have quite a large home. She soon corrected me when she explained her home was an old terraced house that had been modernised and that she rented the adjoining field, where she kept her two horses. Like many of the older houses in the area where she lived, it had a large rear ‘garden’ which she’d converted into breeding kennels, but the interior of the house was relatively small.

Before going on with her story, she paused to book in a newly arrived patient and its owner and then she continued.

“So, what could I do?” she asked. “The girls had rescued an abandoned puppy and they explained they’d first taken the little dog home but their Mum wouldn’t let them keep it, so they’d thought of me. I didn’t have much choice, so I agreed to take the pup in and see if I could find it a good home.”

“And you thought of us?”

“No, not right away. I’ve had her for about nine months. I just never got around to seriously looking to re-home her but recently, I thought it would be better for her if she could live in a nice home with a family, instead of living in a pen and not having a proper home-life. She gets lots of exercise and playtime in the field of course, but it’s not the same is it?”

I agreed with what she said and agreed to speak to Juliet when I got home. I left the surgery with her address and phone number on a piece of paper and of course, wasted no time informing Juliet about the little dog when I returned home with Charlie.

Juliet, whose thoughts on dog rescue entirely match my own (or we could never do what we do), agreed that we should at least take a look at the little dog in Lisa’s care, so I picked up the phone and called Lisa, who was still at work. We arranged to go over and see the dog the following day, which happened to be her day off. We told our two girls who were excited at the prospect of having a new dog to add to our family and they went to bed that night with their minds already made up. Juliet and I were at least a little more pragmatic, though I think that deep down both of us felt we couldn’t leave the young dog living in a pen any longer than necessary. Lisa had turned to us for help and we both knew that, miracles aside, we would give the pup a home if we liked what we saw and felt she could fit in with our little pack of rescued dogs.