We wanted to donate Lenny’s belongings to somewhere we knew would make good use of them.
While we were there, I told Amanda: ‘It wouldn’t hurt to have a look around the kennels.’
She raised an eyebrow. We both knew we were not emotionally ready to take on another dog and maybe we never would be. Still, we strolled around the kennels and it was then I spotted this big old dog. She was a light-brindle Bull Mastiff and her name was Pepper. I approached her kennel and she rose on her back legs, looked me in the eyes and, her tail wagging, gave me a cuddle through the bars.
Pepper was beautiful. I stood closer to her than I should have done and talked to her for a while as her intelligent eyes watched me with curiosity. There and then, I could have taken her home. Amanda wasn’t sure so, with a heavy heart, I walked away from Pepper.
Really, I knew Amanda was right to be wary of moving too quickly. For the last two years, we’d paid up to eight hundred pounds a month for Lenny’s care, so not only were our hearts broken, but our bank account was depleted. We needed some time to regroup.
But there was a problem.
Our trip to Battersea had set us thinking about rehoming a dog. We didn’t know what to do for the best so we talked about it late into the night. We wanted to help another animal, as we had Lenny, to take in a needy dog and give him or her our love and attention. That might prove to be Lenny’s legacy. I told Amanda: ‘We could give another dog a great life, like the one we gave Lenny.’
She agreed.
We both knew that even though Lenny had been ill for a number of years, we’d done everything in our power to give him the best quality of life. Deep down, we both wanted to do it again. Amanda and I registered our details with Battersea, in case a suitable dog came up in the future.
For us, it was the right way forward. We’d bought Lenny from a breeder, and when he became ill, he was MRI-scanned and X-rayed. We had learnt that the deformities in the structure of his skull were due to years of intensive breeding. Neither of us had associated that kind of deformity with a handsome dog like Lenny. In fact, Lenny’s mother and father had both been pedigree show-winning dogs, but selective breeding can accentuate both desirable and undesirable traits. The breeding process left us with several unanswered moral questions.
Now, as I completed our Battersea application, I felt sure that a mixed-breed rescue dog would suit us, and that Battersea was the best place to begin our search.
Later we were interviewed, vetted and approved and took our time over deciding exactly when to bring a new dog home.
On 23 December, Amanda kissed me goodbye and went off for her late shift as a police officer at two p.m. Hours passed, and at ten, I received an email from her – she was having a quiet moment at work: Our house isn’t the same without that extra heartbeat. What do you think about the third one from the left?
I scrolled down and there on the screen was an image that made me smile. It was a professional photograph of eight beautiful champagne-coloured puppies. The litter had been abandoned and now Battersea was rehoming them, according to a story in the Daily Mail.
I replied to Amanda: He looks lovely. I’m ready if you are.
The puppies were adorable, but they’d featured in a national newspaper. I didn’t hold out much hope that they would still be available. Nevertheless, I logged into the Battersea website and registered my interest, using the profile we’d created months earlier.
Amanda also made an email enquiry. We kept our fingers crossed that one of us would get lucky.
The next day, on Christmas Eve, Amanda set off for work at eight a.m. Two hours later, she called me. ‘You’re not going to believe this, Jeff, but I’ve just had a call from Battersea. They said we can come in and meet the puppy we wanted from the photo. And if the meeting goes well, we can bring him home today!’
Apparently, there had been an outbreak of kennel cough at Battersea and they wanted the puppies rehomed without delay. The one we’d asked about was called Prancer, after one of Father Christmas’s reindeer.
When we’d started our search, we’d never expected to have a new puppy in time for Christmas, but we were not about to say no!
Amanda booked the rest of the day off work and, though I was in the middle of painting our new bathroom in time for Christmas visitors – a bit of a departure from my day job as a surveyor – I downed tools and jumped into the car with Megan. We made a quick stop in Maidenhead to pick Amanda up, then drove into London. As we got nearer, the traffic on the motorway ground to a halt. It was getting later and later, and our deadline was fast approaching.
All the way there we hoped Battersea would wait for us. We wanted desperately to get there in time and it felt as though things were falling apart. I encouraged Amanda to call the Home and let them know we were on our way but stuck among thousands of other motorists travelling to their families for Christmas. Battersea had told us that they would be closing their doors at four o’clock.
I reached across the gear stick and took Amanda’s hand in mine. ‘Please don’t upset yourself,’ I said, ‘I’m going to get us there. This puppy is coming home with us today.’
Amanda nodded, but she didn’t say a word, although I could see she was getting more and more stressed. In the back, Megan was quiet, believing we had lost our chance.
At seven minutes past four, we pulled up outside the Home. Amanda and Megan were close to tears. ‘We’re too late,’ Amanda said, as we raced towards the security booth. To our joy, we were ushered through.
We arrived at the desk and told the receptionist our names. She looked us up on the system and, with a smile, said: ‘We’re all ready for you.’
A rehomer took us to a side room and we sat down. Minutes later, she had returned with Prancer. She came towards us and placed him gently on Amanda’s lap.
He looked like the Andrex puppy in the TV adverts.
The rehomer said: ‘Spend some time with him and see how you bond.’ She sat with us and chatted as Prancer got to know us a bit. He was calm and well behaved, and treated us to sloppy kisses. The bonding we would have hoped to come gradually was happening before our eyes.
We all cuddled him and Megan, who was on Christmas holidays from school where she was studying for her AS levels, had already fallen for him. He was so adorable, who wouldn’t?
When it became clear that we wanted to take Prancer home with us, we were joined by one of Battersea’s vets. ‘I think Prancer and the rest of his litter are a mix of Akita, Foxhound and Staffordshire Bull Terrier,’ he said. ‘We don’t know for sure, but that’s what we think.’ He continued: ‘See how you go with him, but if he is an Akita, you might have to deal with some stubbornness and a very strong will, so be prepared for that.’
Nothing could have changed our minds about Prancer now, and Amanda spoke up: ‘We’d love to have him.’
We filled in the necessary forms and popped into the Battersea gift shop while the vet micro-chipped Prancer. There, we bought our puppy some toys and also picked up some of the Battersea children’s story books for our two young nieces, who loved dogs just as we did.
Though the Home was closed, the staff were still busy. Everywhere you looked, staff and volunteers were moving around the site. It was only now that I noticed the jingly Christmas music playing softly in the background and the brightly coloured tinsel in the reception area. I realized that we were about to embark on a very special Christmas.
As we were preparing to leave with Prancer, the rehomer told us: ‘This little dog will need a quiet environment without too much excitement or too many people.’
Amanda, Megan and I knew that would be difficult to achieve, given that it was Christmas and our family were coming to stay, but we promised to do our best. It was an unusual situation for Battersea – they didn’t normally rehome animals so close to Christmas for exactly those reasons – but this year the kennel-cough virus could have proved fatal for any of the puppies if they had caught it.
On the way home
, while I drove and Megan held Prancer, Amanda was making calls. She told all our family and friends about our new arrival, and warned those coming for dinner the next day that it might be a bit later than usual. We’d dropped everything to rush to Battersea, leaving paint pots and brushes in the bathroom, and a mountain of unpeeled spuds and vegetables in the kitchen. The Christmas tree wasn’t even up!
When we arrived home, we made up a bed for Prancer in a quiet, open area under the stairs and set to work. Immediately, we were one pair of hands down. Amanda couldn’t keep away from Prancer so I left her to it.
To our amazement, he was very well behaved from the start. He wasn’t hyperactive, happily accepting cuddles and kisses or napping in his bed. Occasionally, he had a sniff around or pawed a bauble but quickly settled back in his bed. He’d had an exciting and tiring day.
Slowly but surely, the house took shape. While Megan finished putting the last baubles on the tree, I put up the Christmas lights and lit the fire.
Long after Prancer was asleep and Megan had gone to bed, Amanda and I finished peeling the potatoes and preparing the vegetables. It was two a.m., and we were exhausted so we went to bed. Just a few hours later, we were up again. We had eight coming for dinner, including my son Charlie, who lived and worked at Basingstoke Hospital, and my elder daughter Kayleigh, who arrived from Oxford in time for breakfast. They were both excited to meet Prancer, fussing and cuddling him. No matter how much we wanted to follow Battersea’s advice to give him a quiet environment, it simply wasn’t possible on Christmas Day.
Christmas is a big deal in our family, and as the day went on, Prancer coped well. He wasn’t nervous or edgy and loved all the attention he was getting. He was starting to find his way around the house and was sniffing all the furniture. Prancer didn’t run up to people: instead he waited till they were near him before he rolled over to have his belly rubbed.
Before dinner, we opened our presents, and because Prancer had been such a late addition to our family, Amanda, Megan and I had only the toys we’d bought for him from the Battersea shop.
But someone had done much better than that. Kayleigh, who was animal mad, pulled out a stocking filled with puppy treats, chews and toys and set it in front of him.
‘I picked it up yesterday for him when Amanda called from work. I knew from the tone of her voice she was bringing him home for sure.’
It was the perfect gift but, after a cursory sniff, Prancer wasn’t interested. He much preferred walking around, getting kisses and strokes from our guests.
As for the rest of us, the presents didn’t matter because we had that gorgeous puppy! Everything had happened in such a blur – we had to keep pinching ourselves to be sure he was really ours.
With the fire blazing in the grate, Prancer took the same spot in front of it that Lenny always had and went to sleep while we sat down to a lovely meal. Despite all the drama, it was only an hour later than usual.
Afterwards, we started to think about what we should name our puppy, but nothing seemed to fit his character. We wanted somehow to link him to Lenny – we had named him after Lenny, the gentle giant in the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. We considered George, Lenny’s friend in the book, but George’s stern character didn’t suit our bouncy puppy.
Later in the evening, we watched an old film, as we always do. This year It’s A Wonderful Life was showing. It’s the story of a small-town bank manager who has to fight off the big-city lenders who are trying to buy his bank and make his customers’ lives a misery. We’d seen it a hundred times, but everyone gathered in the lounge, taking a spot on the sofa or on the floor.
As the movie got under way, I noticed that George Bailey, the main character, was kind and benevolent. It gave me an idea. ‘What about if instead of George we call the puppy Bailey? It still kind of links back to Lenny and George, and George Bailey is so kind.’
There was a moment’s quiet as we all thought about it. Then there was a round of nods. With that, I scooped our puppy into my arms and looked at him. He looked like a Bailey so it was settled.
After the film, we played board games and, come midnight, everyone was suitably exhausted. We took ourselves off to bed, and Bailey slept straight through the night.
In the morning, we found him awake and in bed, with the laziest expression on his face. This became a pattern. Every morning Amanda or I had to drag Bailey outside. He was the least demanding dog I’d ever known! At night, though, he began to keep a keen eye on the door and an ear to the ground for any movement outside. The moment he heard something, he let out a bark: Something’s going on.
We told him: ‘Thanks for your input, Bailey, but don’t worry about that.’
Reassured, he went back to sleep.
As Bailey grew, his Akita traits started to show. He was protective and independent. He wasn’t needy and didn’t come to us all the time for cuddles. Instead, he patrolled the house day and night, checking on things. There were moments, of course, when he would roll over and wait for you to tickle his stomach. That was when he was at his most relaxed and he’d let out a funny sing-song type of soft howl – his Staffie side coming out. It was endearing and the best way to tell that Bailey was happy.
Outside the house, we learnt something else. When it came to other dogs, Bailey wasn’t very sociable. As a puppy he’d been fearless and bounded up to dogs double his size to play. Now that he was nearing 30 kilos, it came off somewhat differently. He was very stubborn, just as the Battersea vet had predicted, and if the dog he approached didn’t want to play, Bailey wouldn’t leave them alone. We learnt it was best to move him on before things became heated.
As there hadn’t been time for him to be neutered at Battersea, because of the threat of kennel cough, we had him done when he was around a year old. After that, he was a bit less strong-willed and we found that other dogs didn’t react to him in the same way as before. They weren’t so argumentative around him and things calmed down.
It was then that Bailey’s comical side began to shine. If he had picked an awkward spot to have a sleep, you couldn’t move him. He was really talkative too. He grumbled and chatted and howled when he wanted something, usually his ball. He’d roll it around until it spun under the sofa or a cabinet and then he’d lie on the floor and grumble till one of us got down on our hands and knees to pull it out. He thought it was a terrific game, and once he was on a roll, he drove us mad with that ball.
Bailey was so communicative that he’d look at you when you talked to him, and howl back. Once, after watching a bunch of YouTube videos of dogs making sounds like human words, we thought we’d give it a try with Bailey. I sat on the sofa and he rested his front paws on my knees as I talked to him. ‘Bailey,’ I said, ‘where does your aunty live?’
He began to howl.
I asked him again and then Bailey made a sound that had us all in stitches. So I asked him once more. He repeated it.
Bailey was saying: ‘Bedford.’
We had great fun with that.
Bailey was not good around horses. Unlike Lenny, he couldn’t grasp that they weren’t interested in him and got under their feet. When we were out walking in the fields near our home and encountered some, he would run towards them and they would chase him. He thought it was a great game and, luckily, he was quick and nimble enough to get out of the way of their hoofs.
Amanda and I made sure the shifts she worked at the station and the ones I worked as a surveyor were arranged in such a way that Bailey wasn’t left alone during the day. But sometimes there were periods when he was on his own for a short time. A neighbour told us to that he howled when we weren’t there. She wasn’t complaining but, as a dog owner herself, was concerned. Next time our shifts meant that Bailey would be alone for a while, I left my phone at home with a sleep app open. It was meant to pick up and track my snoring in the night, but I reckoned it would pick up Bailey’s howling too. Sure enough, when I returned home and checked it, Bailey had been howling.
It was
around this time that Amanda and I started talking about getting another dog to keep Bailey company. It was just an idea we were toying with when, one afternoon, I popped out of work for some fresh air in the winter sunshine and noticed a man with a little Jack Russell. I was amazed that the dog wasn’t on a lead and was obediently walking next to his owner. I thought: That’s very good.
When I was a child, we’d had a Jack Russell and he’d been a great family dog but not very obedient. Although we loved him very much, I’d decided I’d never own a Jack Russell. When I saw this dog walking so well without a lead I was interested. Just then, his owner ducked into a shop, and as I watched the dog, I realized that things weren’t perhaps as they had first seemed.
I went over to the shop, popped inside and found the man I’d seen go in moments earlier. I approached him. ‘Sorry to trouble you, but that dog outside, is he yours?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘He just started following me and I thought if I came inside he might go back to his owner.’
What the man hadn’t figured out, which I just had, was that the dog was a stray.
I stepped back out and the little dog seemed lost and confused. He was trying to latch on to anyone walking past. When he darted into the road, I rushed after him, scooped him up and carried him back to the pavement. His heart was hammering and he was clearly very scared.
He wasn’t wearing a collar so I got into my car with him and drove to a local vet, who scanned for a microchip and found the details of his owner. Immediately, she called the number registered on the database but it was unobtainable, so she sent a letter to the owner’s address, saying that their dog had been found.
In the meantime, we called the dog warden, who said he’d pick him up the following day and asked if I’d keep him overnight. I had no problem with that so I took him home. I carried him through the front door as I thought it would be best to have him in my arms so Bailey didn’t scare him. That was a terrible mistake. Bailey was so intrigued that he jumped up at us over and over again to get a good look at him. The Jack Russell was terrified. I’d nicknamed him Paddy because his tail had been docked – something long outlawed in the UK but not in Northern Ireland where I suspected it had taken place.
Christmas at Battersea: True Stories of Miracles and Hope Page 17
