Reply to: http://laurawhispering.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/puppy-love.html
We grew up with labradors. The first was Susie. My parents got her because my gran occasionally bred litters and always told buyers they could return any puppy with no questions asked at any point in their lives (pretty much the only way my gran could bear to part with puppies to strangers who might not love them as much as she would - she also couldn't watch ANY animals on tv - including 'Lassie' (!) in case they got hurt -she was a farmer's wife!!!). Susie was returned ostensibly because she was chasing sheep, but in the whole time my parents had her, she NEVER showed any interest in sheep (which is a big no-no for a farm dog of course!). She had obviously not had the best situation in her early life but soon settled into life with my parents. Because of her troubled early life, if they walked in opposite directions on the beach, she went nearly beserk (an otherwise calm dog) running round them in a large circle, because she couldn't decide who to go with in case one abandoned her :,-( Anyway, she was a fixture long before I was. She wasn't entirely sure of me when I was born (as she had previously been an only child). Apparently she was always fine with me, but tended not to pay me much attention. By the time my brother came along, she was used to the idea, and was protective of him, lying under his pram in the front garden and barking anytime she thought someone might harm him (every passer by in the street! - which wasn't very conducive to him sleeping!). I got into a habit of waiting for my Mum to forget to close the larder (by then we had been joined by a kitten called Cola, rescued from the Pepsi factory where my Dad worked): I'd take out the Winalot and share it out in a circle, a piece for Susie (wolfed it down), a piece for Cola (battled her way through it with her tiny mouth!) and a piece for me! Susie patiently waited for her next piece, until Mum discovered us!
I cried my eyes out when we moved to Germany when I was four and Mum had to explain to me that it wouldn't be fair to take Susie as she would have to spend 6 months in quarantine on our return. (I can remember wanting the best for her but also not knowing what life would be without her!) Mum still thinks both leaving her and telling me were some of the hardest things to do! She went to live with my grandparents on the farm and we saw her once a year. When we came back 4 years later, she came back to us. She was always the gentlest, most sensible, wisest member of the family ;-p - except when it came to postmen! She could be trusted in the front garden (no gate) at any time! When she got old she got Alzheimers and started to wander off. It was so sad, because it took us a while to stop letting her out - Mum would ask us to keep an eye on her, but invariably we would forget as we played and then Mum, us and the other children from the street would search for her, terrified that something had happened to her. She had looked after us every chance she had but we were still a little young to look after her. When Mum eventually had to take her to be put down, she cried all the way to collecting us from school (Susie had been around for all of her marriage!) and then my brother announced to his friend that "Mum killed our dog today!" :-(
A while later my gran bred one last litter so we could have another dog. Mum really wanted a golden labrador so they bred my grans' black bitch with a golden labrador that had sired one of the Andrex puppies. She had something like 10 black and 3 chocolate puppies! We chose one of the most energetic of the black puppies so that she could keep up with us children and after much family debate, called her Poppy. She never got over her tendency to run away if you opened the door (you could literally only take her out on a lead!) but she did better than many of her siblings in that we always caught her again or she came back. (The moral of the story is that the doggy relatives of tv stars are as hard work as some of their human equivalents, several of her siblings ran away from their homes at some point in their lives and never came back :-( ). I don't know if it was genes, personality of having three children to compete with, but despite my parents knowledge of dog training, she never got over her hyper traits, including jumping up on every one who came through the door (except on men in boiler suits who made her shake :-( )! She also had a strange fear of a sheep stuffed toy which made her shake every time she saw it! She never could understand that the horses didn't want to be friends with her either, which resulted in her approaching them with puppy-like exuberance and then having to do a swift 180 when she realised they were going to chase her - every time! Even when she was old and had arthritis, she walked through snow as high as the top of her legs her last Christmas because she got an adrenaline rush of excitement! We thought we were going to have to carry her home at one point!
In my parents case, she was the last dog they had. The cats outlived her, but my parents wanted to be able to travel more after we left home, so after that we just visited my grandparents and uncle's dogs. They were also a collection of characters! With a variety of illnesses, including disclocated hips (common in labradors), blindness, deafness, schizophrenia and probably others I've forgotten, because somehow the sick ones were attracted to them! Hmmm, this is long! Your blog brought back the memories!!!!
