I’ve always had animals in my life – dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises, guinea pigs, various budgies. And goldfish. In my childhood mostly, as my parents thought it would be good for my development, I suppose: recognizing the importance of all living creatures, learning responsibility by looking after them and so on. It probably worked, in that I’ve never knowingly mistreated any of them, no matter how big a pain in the neck they were.

My parents were particularly fond of dogs, so there was always one around the house. Mostly they were black labrador or labrador-cross mongrels, and they were always great. I remember one in particular: we’d had a bitch called Judy who lived to a ripe old age (in her 90s in dog years) and after she died my mum was distraught and vowed never to have another dog. Three weeks later dad came strolling in from work, about 8 in the evening as usual, and timidly following him was a sickly and sad looking black labrador, not unlike Judy. A mate of his at work had found the poor thing wandering around the factory estate where they worked, obviously a stray and hungry. Typically, dad had taken pity and fed her half his packed lunch and she had followed him out of the place at the end of the work day. My dad had tied a piece of string around her neck and she had followed him obediently the mile or so walk through the town to the railway station, sat with him on the half hour train ride home, then walked beside him a further mile and a half from the station to our home. It was only when they got into the house that he noticed the string had broken somewhere along the line.

Mum was not best pleased and told him in no uncertain terms she wanted nothing to do with the dog. My sister and I were happy to take her under our wings. But it didn’t last long. The next day mum was sitting at the table having a cup of tea and the dog (still unnamed and with an uncertain future) sidled up to her, placed her chin on mum’s knee gently and gazed up at her with those big dark solemn labrador eyes…. My mum’s heart melted, she gently stroked the dog’s head and the dog responded by slowly wagging her tail. She was now part of our family, we named her Tina and she too lived to a grand old age, all white whiskered before succumbing to a cancer. We were all broken hearted.

So naturally when I married and had my own family we had dogs – a white labrador and a neutered labrador/alsation cross, that between them chewed all the furniture, trashed the garden and demolished fence panels so that entire weekends were spent cleaning up and repairing the mess. We kept them as long as we could afford (fence panels were ridiculously expensive and often were beyond repair after Chloe and Hector had finished with them) so eventually we had to find them new homes. We had a break for a few years, and then on a whim my missus decided to buy a rotweiler. He was huge and despite the breed’s reputation very gentle, but he scared the life out of my sister-in-law when he very carefully took her forearm in his jaws and stared at her. It wasn’t in the least a bite, just a friendly hello, but it was enough: that evening we returned Boris to the people we had bought him from and got a refund – they were very undertanding and there was no problem.

We went from one extreme to the other (at least in terms of dog size) and invested in a brindle English bulldog pup – she died three days later from an undetected heart problem. My youngest boy was distraught, so we went back to the breeder, who gave us the pup’s mother. Her name was Maggie, a pedigree as long as your arm, and was an absolute text-book bully: all brown and white patches, barrel chest, fangs and dribble. But at four years old, after bearing two litters (a total of 12 pups) her usefulness to the breeder was over. She was fantastic: we had her for another two or three years and never had a days’ trouble from her – until someone failed to shut the gate properly and she went for a stroll in the woods across the road. By the time my missus found her she had just been mounted by a big grey and white husky…. My missus shoo’d him off and took Maggie home. We forgot the incident until the day my eldest son came down to get himself some breakfast before school – and found blood all over the kitchen floor and poor Maggie whimpering on the patio outside, a pair of legs dangling from her nether regions. The husky had done the job in those few seconds and Maggie was now suffering the consequences. She managed to push out that one (it was stillborn), and we then found another three whimpering puppies lying under the dining room table.

They were beautiful. Imagine a husky with a bulldog face and stumpy tail, and that was the result – extraordinary and probably unique. And destructive too – once they had been weaned we made them a place in the toilet in the hall by the front door while we found new homes for them, and they ate half the linoleum on the floor and almost broke through the door itself. But we found them homes on farms in the area and they went off to live (I hope) happy lives roaming the fields and woodlands.

But poor Maggie never recovered. She lingered for the rest of that year, then literally disappeared one day the following spring. Again the gate wasn’t properly closed, so we assume she just wandered off. Our house had a wood across the road and a path ran down the hill next to us, through the estate and into open farmland and more woodland. We assume she went that way, but can’t be certain: despite searching for her, walking for hours far and wide calling her name, we never found a trace of her. To this day I have no idea what happened. But I hope the last 18 months, perhaps two years of her life, with us, she was happy and cared for. I think she was.

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Time passed, my life and work changed and I found myself relocating to a city in another country with a new family. It was all completely unplanned, unexpected and not without many subsequent years of heartache, only now passing into memory with grandchildren back home Living in a flat, travelling weekly elsewhere on the planet to work and babies to care for at weekends meant pets of any kind were at the very bottom of our life agenda, but come retirement we began to think a dog might be fun.

Just a small one, easy to look after, not needing too much exercise. Covid sealed the deal – after recovering (at least in part; the second infection was very bad and I carry the physical and mental scars to this day) I needed more walking exercise as part of my recuperation. What to get was never in question: another English bulldog. It took a while, but eventually we found one for sale, the last of litter from a breeder nearly 300km away, near the coast. My Beloved spotted it on Facebook, made a call and within ten minutes she, myself and my daughter were in the car heading off to collect the animal. We left the washing up to my son, who was not amused.

The breeder lived in a tumbledown cottage in woods about twenty or so kilometers inland from the Baltic, with a big garden and many kennels, and as well as breeding at least this litter of bulldogs also bred many alsations that were housed in a long row of big cages, barking and awaiting homes. The two remaining bulldog pups were in a small fenced run, and were gorgeous. One was mostly brown with white patches, the other white with a brown ear and matching brown patch on her bum, and a few brown spots here and there. She was the liveliest of the two, and ran over to make a fuss of my daughter, who picked her up and was immediately piddled on.

Choice made, we took her home with us – and I sincerely hope her sister also found a good home too: I would have taken both if we had had the money and a house with a garden rather than a fifth floor apartment.

We’ve had her ever since, four years now, and she has grown into a splendid specimen. We had her spayed, to avoid unwanted pups like poor Maggie had borne (in a small apartment breeding is out of the question), so she is smaller and slimmer than most of her breed. She still has the barrel chest and the strength that goes with it, and snores and dribbles more than any dog I’ve ever come across in my life. She sleeps a lot, but likes a good walk around the neighbouhoods and sometimes we load her into the car and take her further afield, down to woodland on the banks of the Vistula river, and let her run wild for a few hours. We’ve taken her to the sea (she loved it), and all the parkland around our suburb, where she has befriended dogs of many breeds. Strutting around our neighbourhood in her camouflage jacket in cold weather, snuffling under the bushes, chasing birds that she will never in a million years come close to catching, and being petted by seemingly every old lady within a three kilometre radius is one of my main pleasures.

She has not been without problems. After a shaking fit one evenng we took her to the vet for tests, and it turns out she suffers from epilepsy. We give her three tablets a day to control it, and it doesn’t really affect her that much, thankfully. She gets the odd ear infection that also needs medication, and is very much a nervous nelly. Motor scooters terrify her and she attacks them whenever one passes close by when we’re on our walks – and since the damned things are used by a legion of fast food delivery outlets pretty much 24/7, that happens a lot. But by and large she is a happy and well cared for dog. There are few things I like more in life than the evenings, when I’m sitting in my armchair watching tv, or with My Beloved on the settee, and Lulu (for that is her name) scrambles up and lays down on my lap, gives a big contented sigh, closes her eyes and goes to sleep….

I wouldn’t change her for the world.