For the Love of Dogs

I’ve had dogs in my life for as long as I can remember. They’ve always been there, firmly cementing themselves as part of the family and delighting us all with their canine antics.

Growing up, our family dog was a Labrador mix called Mr. Big. He started life as Dixie, but then became Prince for a short while until we all noticed how he was starting to balloon, as Labradors tend to do, so he finally became Big. Mister was later added in recognition of the distinguished gentleman he had become.

Mr. Big was well known in our neighbourhood. He often used to wander along the street by himself to check out what was going on. Sometimes I’d walk him to the shops, on a lead, and random strangers would pat him on the head and tell me how they’d regularly give him a stroke when he was out and about on one of his solo jaunts. Other passing pedestrians would simple say, "Hello old fella" without even looking at me. He was a bit of a local celebrity.

He was the only dog who wore a red nose for charity on Comic Relief Day. Someone saw him and called a journalist from the local paper, who quickly shot around for a photo shoot. Mr. Big lapped it up, sitting on a chair like a super model, passively doing just as he was instructed.

We lived next door but one to a hotel, and Mr. Big was known for sneaking into the kitchen and stealing cakes. Remarkably, no-one seemed to mind. One Christmas, he even managed to shuffle out with a whole turkey, which he promptly buried in our garden.

Wherever the children were, Mr. Big would be there too. Sometimes he’d wander along the street around the time he knew we’d be on our way home from school, and when he spotted us in the car, he’d turn on his heels and run full pelt to get back to us. I still smile when I think about how, when we were relaxing, watching TV, he’d sleep so closely to the gas fire that he’d end up with singed lines on his fur. It was also in this TV room that another, less savoury, characteristic would surface…with his burgeoning girth came incredible flatulence and we were often known to hold cushions against our noses to save our senses from ‘l’eau de Big’ floating in the air.

Some of my happiest childhood memories come from countryside walks; clambering over stiles, dipping my feet in fresh water and playing in the woods. Of course, Mr. Big relished these moments and, like most dogs, would go crazy with excitement when he realised we were off on a trek. Our long garden led down to a wooded area, with fields and a stream beyond. It was delightful to watch Mr. Big so consumed with happiness, running back and forth, eagerly taking in every moment. I remember once he purposely hid from us, behind a fallen tree, when we called him. Little did he know that his wagging tail was sticking out, totally giving his game away.

Nowadays, I always feel like a walk isn’t really a proper walk unless you have a dog or two in tow. It seems like a wasted exercise without an enthusiastic canine by your side, sharing the joy.

I like to think of Mr. Big as a one-off, a larger than life personality who filled our days with love and fun. The truth is, though, that when you get to know any dog well enough, you’re bound to find remarkably endearing traits. Dogs are amazing. They’re unquestionably loyal and the embodiment of unconditional love. To them, you are the world, the only thing that really matters, and their main focus is to be by your side pleasing you.

When I lived in London with my sister, her black Labrador, Ellie, stayed with us for a while. Ellie was a very sweet soul who took easily to city life. She would navigate underground escalators with ease and take a seat on the tube like any other passenger. Riverside walks were so much more fulfilling when shared with her, even if she did have that Labrador quality of sniffing out any possible food she could wolf down!

When I moved to Fiji at the end of 1998, my mum had three wonderful dogs there. She visited the local SPCA a few times to look for two puppies to adopt, but each time she went she would see Charlie, a very large black and tan dog, patiently sitting in a cage, waiting for his freedom. He used to belong to the Fiji School Of Medicine, until he was hit by a car. Someone took him to the SPCA for treatment but never came to pick him up. He was a gentle giant, very handsome with a bit of a German Shepherd look about him. When my Mum eventually found two puppies she wanted, Bella and Bo, she couldn’t bear to leave Charlie behind, so she took him too.

Bella and Bo were sisters, but Bella was the runt of the litter and earned the nickname Weed, which stuck. Bo was strikingly beautiful, with a sleek, well-proportioned Doberman look about her. My Mum would treat them like babies, putting each one in the pocket of her apron while she went about household tasks, and fed them a diet that most humans would enjoy. Charlie, meanwhile, was soft and hugely lovable, but also commanded respect and firmly established himself as king of the pack on Mum’s street.

I fell for the dogs as soon as I met them. They were so sweet and full of character. I especially loved taking them to the beach, when Bo would stand with her fore-legs on the front arm rest of the car, her face close up to the windscreen, while both the others would have their heads sticking out of the back windows, embracing the wind. We looked like some kind of canine flying machine!

When Mum left Fiji, I kept Weed, Bo and Charlie. When my husband and I moved into our first house together, we took them with us, but also found that the landlord had left another dog at the property. She was a pretty white and tan mix breed and we called her Bea. When we asked the landlord what he wanted to do with her, he suggested that we drive out of town and dump her there…sadly this is all too common in Fiji. So, of course, we ended up keeping Bea too.

The first night in our new house, Bea spent all evening crying by the garden wall, and there seemed to be another dog on the other side of the wall who was whimpering just as much. The next day, we visited our neighbours to talk about it.

There, in the sitting room, sat a large Indo-Fijian woman with a distinctly regal air. She gestured towards a humble looking, thin man and said, "This is the caretaker of my property. He is also my brother.” We established that her brother had been given Bea’s daughter by our landlord on the day we moved in, but they were missing each other terribly. We asked if we could take the daughter back, to ease the dogs’ sadness. The woman agreed, but the brother quietly insisted that he had one more night with the dog.

The next day, when we went to get Bea’s daughter, we were told she had run away. Who knows what became of her.

Unbeknown to us, Bea was pregnant. She gave birth to a beautiful litter of puppies who were a sheer delight. Before their scheduled vaccinations, however, one was stolen and the others came down with parvovirus. They succumbed very quickly and it was heartbreaking to witness. One of them seemingly beat it, after days of vigorous treatment at the vets, but was so swollen from IV fluids that the vet made the mistake of administering a diuretic, which turned out to be too much for his fragile system to cope with. The only survivor was Tyse, the puppy who first came down with symptoms. I was so grateful to still have him that I treated him like a baby. He was constantly by my side, sitting on my lap on car journeys and resting on my tummy on the sofa. As a result, he became fiercely protective of me, which was quite useful in a country where burglaries are commonplace (in fact, we were burgled one night when the puppies were tiny, and I always wondered if this might have been how Tyse developed a dislike for local looking men).

Buster, the stolen puppy, escaped the parvovirus episode. I went to great lengths to find him, distributing reward posters and putting adverts in the newspaper. The day I went to the local police post to put up some notices was the day of the 2000 coup in Fiji. There was chaos all around. Suva city was burnt and looted. Truck loads of young men passed our house on their way out of town, triumphantly waving cane knives as they headed back to their villages, laden with their spoils. Yet I couldn’t be distracted from the task of finding our puppy, and, incredibly, with so much on their plate that day, the police showed concern and pinned my posters to their notice boards.

Before long, we received the golden phonecall…Buster was in a nearby settlement, tied outside a house. We agreed a time and place to meet the informant and hand over the reward, and when I finally had Buster back in my arms, he was absolutely bursting with happy puppy energy, licking my face and nuzzling my neck. It was wonderful. The crowd that had gathered around us were all smiling with delight and I had tears of joy in my eyes. He had a very solid little body, with silky smooth fur and delightful rolls of fat. It felt amazing to embrace him again, particularly after all but one of his siblings had passed away.

A few days later, however, I heard a commotion on the road outside our house. A group of youths had tried to entice Buster out of our garden again. He’d squeezed under the gate, only to get hit by a supermarket van. We rushed him to the vets but an x-ray showed his back was broken and he had to be put to sleep. It was gut-wrenching.

It was around this time that I was watching TV at home one night and, as I gazed outside the sitting room window, I thought I saw two eyes peering back at me in the darkness. I moved closer to the window and discovered a man in his twenties focussing on me with a fixed, unwavering gaze. Our home was fully fenced, so he must have climbed over to get in. I quickly called my husband, George, and we went out to confront him. He asked George to get the key for the gate so he could get out, but we didn’t think it was wise to turn our back on him so we told him he could get out the same way he got in. Until then, the dogs had all been lazing on the verandah, oblivious to the strange man who was calmly sitting beside them, staring at me. However, when they picked up on our feelings of discontent they started to bark at him. Then, just as he was clambering over the gate, Charlie leapt up and gave him a bite on the bum!

It was then that I began to teach the dogs to bark at strangers. I must have seemed like a lunatic, imitating a dog as I barked at passers by outside our fence, but the dogs soon got the message and before long they embraced their new responsibility.

A few months later we moved into a different house, with a pool and a lovely view of some nearby islands dotted in the sparkling sea. Charlie, Weed, Bo, Bea and Tyse enthusiastically ran through the gate to explore their new home, only to fall into the pool, one by one, and look at us as if we’d played some mean joke. We couldn’t stifle our laughter.

It was our dogs’ incessant barking one night that alerted our neighbours to an intruder in their home, and our landlord later told us that we were the first tenants in their house that hadn’t been burgled, which was clearly because of my devoted canine security team.

We moved to New Zealand when I was about five months pregnant with our first child, Ruby, and so we took Charlie, Weed, Bo and Tyse with us. A colleague’s Mum offered to look after Bea, but dropping her at her new home was painfully difficult. I could hear her crying as we got into the car to leave and I felt like a dreadful person. Thankfully, her new owner doted on her and she spent the rest of her years being babied and given the love she deserved.

The journey to New Zealand wasn't without incident. Our plane was severely delayed because Tom Cruise's private jet was on the runway. However, in that time, the cabin crew realised that one of our dogs had been put in an unpressurised luggage hold by mistake. We were told that they'd have to take her out and leave her in Fiji. After a firm exchange of words, they finally agreed to put her in the pressurised hold, even though it meant the flight was delayed for a little longer. We used to joke afterwards that Tom Cruise had saved Weed's life!

Our new house in Auckland didn’t seem like a proper home until our dogs were released from quarantine. It took them some time to get used to the cold New Zealand winter after living in the tropics. They were accustomed to swimming in the warm ocean, so the first time we took them for a walk on the beach, they bounded into the sea, only to immediately bound right back out again after they realised how bitingly cold it was! They never dared to swim in Kiwi waters again.

When my second daughter, Lyla, was five weeks old, we moved back to Fiji and, of course, the dogs came with us. We stayed with my in-laws while we looked for a home of our own. Unfortunately their property wasn’t fenced at that time, and one morning while I was in the bedroom I heard a neighbouring housegirl call out to my in-laws' housegirl (a housegirl is what they call a maid in Fiji). Bo had been hit on the road by one of the trucks that would regularly pass by, collecting used glass bottles from residents. She died on impact. It was heart-breaking. She was such a lovely, gentle natured, beautiful dog and we missed her terribly. It was her captivating essence that made my sister fall in love with the name and she later used it for her first child, Beau.

Once we’d moved into our new home, it didn’t take long for it to be filled with dogs in need.

I found Poppy as a tiny puppy after she’d been hit by a car on the long road leading down to our house. She was surrounded by a few other dogs, one of whom was clearly her Mum, acting frantic with concern. I scooped up her little body, brought her home and nursed her back to good health. She had very light blonde fur and looked like a Labrador cross. We were all charmed by her sweet, adorable character and, as she quickly piled on the pounds, her rotund look only added to her appeal.

Poppy and Tyse ended up being best friends.

On another occasion, as I picked up the children from school, all the cars were swerving to avoid something on the road. I got out to see what it was, only to find a tiny puppy lying there, completely still. I lifted him up and put him on my knee as I drove to the SPCA. They gave him enough medical treatment to breathe life back into his little body and a few days later I brought him home. I called him Plug. He had mange and ringworm, but it was nothing that a little TLC couldn’t fix and he soon grew into a very happy, healthy dog.

Our dogs weren’t just pets, they were guard dogs who let us sleep a little more peacefully at night knowing that our security was well taken care of in their reliable paws. The training I had given them had paid off, and new recruits to the canine family learnt from the older ones about barking to scare off would-be intruders. Poor old Charlie got a bit confused one day though when a policeman came onto our property by mistake, looking for someone else. When Charlie realised his barks weren’t stopping him in his tracks, he bit him on the ankle. I took the poor man to hospital for a stitch and apologized profusely. Luckily, Fijians can be quite laid back about these things and he accepted the incident as a risk of the job. What a relief.

The years rolled by and our kooky little Weed went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up in the morning. It was the end of an era. Tyse’s passing was much more drawn out and unsettling. He started to lose weight and was coughing a lot. An x-ray showed two tumours on his lungs. We looked after him at home until he started to have trouble eating and drinking, which was when the vet advised that putting him to sleep was our only option. I was consumed with grief. He was my loyal bodyguard who only ever wanted to be by my side. He’d barked at a suspicious strange man who’d got too close to me when I was heavily pregnant and alone on a beach in New Zealand, he’d barked at some door to door salesmen who took it upon themselves to come into our house without knocking and got too close to my newborn baby, he barked at presumed burglars who dared come onto our property in Fiji, yet beneath this fierce, protective façade he was supremely gentle and loving. Losing him was extremely hard. His very last gesture was to lick away my tears as he took his final breath. It pains me to think about it even now.

Shortly before Tyse passed, an emaciated dog started to hang around our neighbourhood. She had protruding ribs and a damaged front leg. Our neighbour told us that a group of men had tried to trap her to use her for pig hunting in the highlands and broken her limb in the process. I tried to coax her into our home so I could look after her, but her experiences had made her extremely wary of people. She then came on heat and suffered the advances of all the unneutered dogs in the area. I persevered with my mission to befriend her, and one day she was so hungry she couldn’t resist eating a long trail of dried dog food which led onto our verandah. I leapt out, closed the gate and slowly gained her trust. Despite her horrific experiences, she still just wanted some love, and after she realised that I wasn’t going to hurt her she closed her eyes with contentment as she allowed me to stroke her. I called her Betsy-Lou.

I set up a birthing box for her and it was completely magical when, a few days later, George came into our room as I’d settled into bed for the night and told me that she’d given birth to her first pup. Eight more followed, and I watched in awe as Betsy-Lou instinctively nurtured them and did her best to ensure their survival. She was a wonderful mother, being especially careful not to step on her puppies as she tentatively climbed in and out of her box on three legs.

When the puppies were three months old, we took them to the vet to be neutered and spayed. We also took Betsy-Lou, to save her from any more pregnancies. The vet looked at her injured front leg and advised us that it was beyond repair and should be amputated. We hastily agreed, believing it to be in her best interests. It was a decision I would live to regret.

Betsy had the operation that evening, but a few hours later, in the middle of the night, the kennel hand noticed that her breathing was laboured and stayed with her as she passed away. We don’t know why for sure, but my best guess is that the operation triggered a fatal blood clot. We collected her body to bury at home, and once again I found myself immersed in grief. Dogs have a way of creeping into your heart and, when they’re gone, the empty space aches with the pain of their departure.

I channeled some of my sorrow into a long article I wrote for the Fiji Times. I used Betsy-Lou’s story to highlight the plight of abused animals and urged people to extend kindness and compassion to Fiji’s street dogs.

Betsy-Lou’s puppies clearly missed her and would whimper for her company. The biggest softie of all was MJ, who would cry constantly unless he was cuddled up in someone’s arms. Luckily, between my husband, myself and our four children, we had lots of loving arms to hold him.

Sadly, three of Betsy’s puppies passed away from a stomach infection. Strangely, they seemed to be the biggest, most robust looking ones, with the silkiest fur. It was very sad to see these happy, healthy, lively little bundles, who we all adored, lose their boundless energy so quickly and succumb to their illness.

When the time came to move to Qatar, we knew we couldn’t possibly take Charlie, Poppy, Plug and the six puppies with us. In fact, they were one of the major reasons why I continually chopped and changed my mind about leaving the country. The idea of parting with my beloved dogs seemed too much to bear. In the end, we settled on the best solution we could come up with. Instead of renting out our house, a family member moved in who took care of Charlie, Poppy and Plug for us. By that stage, Charlie was fourteen years old anyway and the long journey would have been very hard for him. One of the puppies, Archie, also stayed with them but later became very attached to our wonderful, dog-loving neighbour, who now cares for him.

My in-laws agreed to look after three female puppies for us; Florie, Freya and Nola. Their property by then was fully fenced and they have a large garden, so it was an ideal place for them to move to. They’re very sweet-natured dogs and my children still reminisce about them and ask if we can bring them over here!

We took MJ, our cry baby, and Panda-Boo, the only black and white puppy in the litter, with us. MJ clearly needed us and Panda-Boo had inherited quite a nervous energy from her Mum, so leaving them behind would have been problematic. It was a long and difficult journey; they had to fly from Fiji to Australia, from Australia to Dubai and from Dubai to Qatar. It was completely worth it though. When they were delivered to our new house by the lovely pet-relocation women we definitely felt a little more at home in Qatar.

MJ has grown into an enormous dog. People constantly ask us what breed he is, and are surprised to find out that he’s just a pure Fiji mix! He certainly looks as if he won the genetic lottery. He’s such a placid soul though and his good nature has won him awards at the local dog show.

Panda-Boo is a mummy’s girl. She likes to follow me everywhere I go, but she still hasn’t quite lost the nervous edge which she’s always had. I don’t think she ever will, it’s in her genes.

When I gaze at them, our globe trotting South Pacific dogs who made it all the way to the Middle East, I often think about their beautiful mum and all the other dogs we’ve loved and lost. Each one of them has touched us in their own, unique way and will never be forgotten. I simply can’t imagine a home without dogs and I know that wherever we are in the world, there will always be a canine companion or two with us, completing our family.

Sadly, Charlie, Poppy and Plug have passed away while we’ve been in Qatar. Each time, the news has brought a wave of nostalgia with poignant memories flooding back , making me wish that I could have been with them in their final days. Charlie would have been about sixteen.

Dogs have a way of making you look at the bigger picture, with their lifespan representing a little era in your own history. They make you reflect on the passage of time and everything else that happened when they were around, and you look back with sentimentality as you reluctantly close the door on that period and move forward into the next chapter.

Yet with new chapters come new canine characters and new experiences. When my oldest daughter, Ruby, turned thirteen, she asked for a little dog of her own, one that could sleep on her bed and be her close companion. I thought it would be best to get a breed that didn’t shed fur, so when we found a tiny Maltese at a local rescue centre she fitted the bill perfectly. Ruby called her Zoe. She’s now utterly devoted to Ruby, and Ruby to her.

So, we currently have six children and three dogs in our Doha house, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. To me, happiness is being surrounded by children and dogs because they both bring warmth, love and expressions of genuine feeling which I am endlessly in awe of and grateful for.

You may have noted that all the dogs we’ve owned have either been adopted from a rescue centre or found in dire circumstances. The idea of going to a breeder to buy a dog doesn’t sit comfortably with me when there are so many abandoned dogs and puppies out there in urgent need of a loving home. I’m a firm believer in the motto, ‘Adopt, don’t shop’. I also strongly support neutering or spaying puppies and dogs at the earliest opportunity to prevent needless suffering in the future.

While it’s easy to become disheartened and overwhelmed by incidents of animal cruelty, it’s also uplifting to see how many people devote their lives to helping dogs in need. In Fiji and Qatar I have met lots of amazing people who dedicate their time and energy to helping animals and I often look to them for reassurance and inspiration.

This blog post has turned out to be a lot longer than anticipated, but I think this just reflects my passion for the subject. Dogs are truly marvellous and I feel incredibly blessed and thankful for all those that I’ve been lucky enough to share my life with. I think Tennyson put it perfectly when he wrote, “'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I'm sure all dog owners would agree.