Saving Maya

by Janetta Harvey

  “But puppies are a lot of fun,” Tom said, putting his mug of tea down on the kitchen table so he could give Willow a stroke, as she shifted her head from resting on Patsy’s knees to nuzzle in between them both.

  Patsy sighed. “Puppies are cute, I agree. But they don’t stay puppies for long anyway, and really, I’ve come across some horrible stuff on the internet about how a lot of puppies start their lives. They’re not all lucky like Willow you know, born with kind families, in a nice home,” Patsy stood up and looked out of the window, her hazel eyes focusing on the large clump of white snowdrops under the trees at the end of the garden. Turning back to Tom, she said, “Have you heard about puppy farming?”

  “Puppy farming? Errr, nope, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s horrible,” Patsy said. “Dogs are kept in sheds, or barns for years, their lives are miserable. They’re kept so they can produce puppies, that’s all. They’re not taken care of, they’re never cuddled, their food’s basic and sometimes they never see a person for days.”

  “Really? That’s terrible.”

  “It really is, I’ve been digging about to find out more and it’s shocking. The dogs don’t go for walks… gosh the poor things never see daylight. They’re basically kept as prisoners their whole lives,” Patsy sipped her tea and offered Tom more from the pot.

  Tom shook his head. “Sounds awful. I’ve kind of heard of it but… ”

  “It’s so sad it makes me want to cry when I see what happens behind the sweet puppies we see for sale everywhere,” Patsy’s eyes moistened as she put her empty mug in the sink.

  “I never knew it was so awful” Tom said, standing to give her a hug.

  Pulling away, Patsy sniffed, blew her nose into a tissue, took a deep breath and was fired up to tell him more, “It’s hard to believe it happens but it does. And all so that puppies can be sold in pet shops or by other people, puppy dealers basically. Sometimes the puppies get taken from their mums in the puppy farms and are sold in homes by people pretending they’ve been born in the house,” she sighed, sitting down at the table.

  “It’s just awful. Poor mum gets left behind in a dirty shed, without her puppies, or anyone to take care of her,” Patsy wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed, as if trying to comfort herself as she looked down at Willow, a look of sadness on her face.

  “I’m so pleased I did my homework when I brought you home Willow,” she said. “It’s a horrible business,” she said, looking at Tom, “one way I’ll know for sure I’m not being part of it, will be to rehome a dog who’s in a rescue centre, one who really needs a home. I’m not buying a puppy, I’m not risking supporting a puppy farm, or falling into the hands of a dealer.”

  “Well you’re selling the idea pretty well to me.” Tom leaned forwards, put his arms around her and hugged her tight.

  “When you think about it, the puppies are the lucky ones,” she sighed into his shoulder, “at least they get out and go to live in families.”

  “Bit different from Willow’s life eh?” Tom said as he sat back, reaching out to stroke Willow who sat watching them, wondering at the conversation she was struggling to understand.

  “Oh Tom, really it’s awful, the poor mums and dads are trapped forever. They don’t get to leave. They’re the ones who really suffer. Some of what I’ve been finding out makes me really cross. And sad. How can anyone do it to dogs?”

  Patsy was overcome by the love she suddenly felt for Willow and scooping her up into her arms, Patsy gave her a tight squeeze.

  “Imagine if you were there Willow, stuck in a puppy farm. I can’t bear to think of it. But now I know about it, we’re going to do something good. We’re going to give a home to a dog in need. I think we’re going to bring one of the mums to live with us,” Patsy breathed into Willow’s sweet smelling fur.

  3

  I want very much to believe that there’s a heaven, that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again.

  Michael Morpurgo, Private Peaceful

  The pain in my hips today is worse than ever. I move around trying to get comfortable on the cold, hard concrete floor of the barn where I’ve spent my whole life. I don’t know how old I am, but I’ve been here a long time. I was born in this dark barn and I will probably die here. I’ve never been outside. The furthest I’ve moved was when I was taken from my mum when I was a few months old. She lived a few pens along from where I am, here in the barn. She must be dead now, although I can’t be certain. I haven’t seen her since the day the Man took me from her.

  It was the first time that I’d left the concrete pen I shared with my mum and I was frightened. All around me I could hear barking, crying dogs. The barn is an unhappy place. As the Man marched me through the huge shed past all the pens I was terrified. I never saw my mum again as the Man took me to another pen, with a thin scattering of grubby sawdust on the floor and a lot of other dogs who I didn’t know. We were all scared and huddled together for comfort.

  In the first few weeks after leaving my mum, in the middle of the lonely nights, I cried and cried into the dark for her. Sometimes, just sometimes, I thought I could hear a faint answer coming back. I could never be certain that it was my mum, there are always so many sounds in the barn it can be hard to hear one thing from another, but it gave me some comfort thinking she might be answering my cries. Then, as time went by, I stopped crying for her, and her voice stopped. Whether it had been in my head, or somewhere in the barn, I’m never sure. But I am sure now that she’s no longer nearby. Something that’s hard for me to explain, it’s an emptiness, a hollowness in my heart that tells me she’s gone. Even if I try really hard to remember, I can’t recall what she sounded, or looked like. There’s just deathly silence in my head where she used to be.

  Although the barn is never silent. It’s a noisy place. The air is filled with the sounds of dogs barking, crying, yelping, whining and howling. Older dogs whimper from pain, the younger ones bark from boredom and loneliness. And then there’s the puppies. The hungry, scared puppies are painful to hear day after day, night after night. The sounds of sorrow and suffering crash around the walls of the barn all day, all night.

  I try to get a little more comfortable but it’s hard when there’s nothing but concrete to rest on. I’m hoping that soon, spring will arrive and bring with it the warmer weather. This winter has been long and hard. Many mornings I’ve woken from a bad night of storms and heavy rain battering the tin roof of the barn. On some stormy nights, the wind blasted the barn walls, causing noise like I’ve never experienced. I’ve been terrified, cowering in the corner of my pen, hearing the sounds of the storm outside, matched by the wailing and terror-filled sounds of the dogs all around me, although I cannot see them. Many a night I’ve wanted to die. To be released from this life I’m forced to live. And then, morning arrives and I find I’m still here, alive but wishing I was dead.

  When my back and hips ache like they do today, I long for the warmer days as my aching bones feel better when the weather is warmer. But then it gets too warm, and the barn soon overheats and the air gets hotter, and smellier and dustier. I get so thirsty and crave a cool, fresh bowl of water, instead of the dirty, green sludge that’s in my pen. With the rising heat, the flies come visiting in their thousands, buzzing about, driving the dogs mad. And the insects creep and crawl through our food.

  But right now, as the cold creeps into my body and I can’t stop shivering with cold and hunger, some warmth would be nice. These days, the Man seems to forget that I’m here as he walks past my pen without glancing in. It’s not that I want him to see me, oh no, not that, he’s nasty and mean, but I do want some food. I’m hungry and it must be a few days since I last ate. I lose track of time, it drags so, and days run into nights and nights into days without there being anything to mark one from the other. The dark of the barn makes sure of th
at.

  There was never much food to eat, but now there are some days I have nothing at all. The water in the dirty bowl is almost gone. I don’t remember when it was last filled with fresh water. I take the smallest sips of the mucky sludge, as I made the mistake once of taking great gulps of the fresh water when it arrived, but then no more was brought for days. I licked the last drops from the dirty bowl, desperately seeking more. I felt like I was dying of thirst as it was hot and stuffy in the barn. It must have been summer. From then on, I learnt to be careful never to drink the last drop, but to save some in case I’m forgotten about again. Which looks like it’s happening now. Over time, I’ve got used to feeling thirsty. As I take a tiny sip of sludge, I make myself imagine that I’m really taking a big fat drink of clean, running water. It eases the pain of my dry mouth and throat just for a second, before the reality comes back and my parched tongue reminds me I’m just dreaming.

  4

  It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

  “Are you ready? Shall we go?” Patsy called, as Willow lay busily sorting through her new toys. At that exact moment, she was chomping away on each of the eight soft felt legs of her new orange and blue octopus, trying to work out which one squeaked the loudest. Undecided, and distracted by Patsy’s call to go, she dropped it behind the wicker toy basket where she’d left the squirrel a little earlier, saving them both for further inspection when she returned from her party in Kettlecroft Park.

  Padding quickly across the room into the hallway where Tom was gathering the door keys, Willow ran over and sat at Patsy’s feet, waiting for her to clip on her brand new red leather lead. This was another birthday gift from Tom. It held no interest for Willow, despite Patsy excitedly squealing with joy when she’d carefully unwrapped it. In fact, Willow had been a little disappointed it hadn’t been something tasty to eat, as the package had smelt temptingly good. Although, she did admit, it was a rather smart lead. Ahh well, she was happy, that Patsy was happy, with Tom’s peculiar idea of what made a good doggy present. And she’d instantly forgiven his curious choice of fancy-red-dog-lead-as-gift when, with her teeth and claws working quickly together, she’d ripped the wrapping paper on the next present and out from the shreds of red tissue, fell the octopus. Now, that was what Willow called a present as it plopped onto the mat.

  “Come on then, let’s go see your friends,” said Patsy, leading Willow out of the door and down the garden path to the wooden front gate. In her left hand, she was carrying a large basket, stuffed with a selection of home baked dog biscuits in plastic tubs. There was a good number of peanut butter, banana and oat cookies; these were Willow’s favourites, and a generous sized tin of delicious squares of liver cake, made from Patsy’s special recipe her friend Kate had given her. All Willow’s doggy friends loved liver cake. Patsy had only to open the smallest corner of the bag containing the neat little brown cubes of tasty delight, and over would run every dog within smelling distance; even Barney the bulldog who rarely ran anywhere.

  But the best thing of all was in the box being carried by Tom. As Willow trotted along between them, she fought the urge to leap at Tom’s legs and reach up with her nose and take deep, long sniffs of the pink boxed parcel he was holding carefully in his arms. All morning in the house its aromas had enticed her black wet nose, making it twitch and itch with excitement every time her nostrils captured a whiff. But the neat box had been kept well out of Willow’s reach, high up on a kitchen shelf.

  But now it was close by, and Willow knew that inside the pretty pink, cardboard cocoon sat the star of yesterday’s baking. The smells coming out of the box were so yummy Willow was finding it hard to control herself. What she really wanted to do, but which she knew she mustn’t, was to jump up and grab it from Tom’s arms, rip into the parcel and expose the treasure hiding inside: her birthday cake. Her delicious, mouth-wateringly good – if you’re a dog – sardine and carrot cake with its moist, tongue-tingling fishy paste topping.

  While she struggled to focus less on the cake, and more on walking nicely on the lead neatly beside Tom’s legs, Willow thought about how much her pals at the park were going to love the squishy, whiffy concoction of a cake. But if they didn’t, she was sure she’d be able to eat the whole thing herself. No doubt about it. She could eat cake all day if only Patsy allowed it. Come to think of it, why didn’t she? Such silly rules humans made her live by.

  Kettlecroft Park was a short walk from Willow’s house, along a quiet footpath where every morning and evening Willow checked the messages left by all the neighbourhood dogs. Sniff, sniff, pee, pee. Even though this was Willow’s birthday, and she had a few other things on her mind, like cake, her new presents left at home, and all the biscuits she was going to eat, the path still needed checking.

  “There you go,” Patsy unclipped her lead and she was off, nose to the ground, heading straight to the closest grassy tussock. As she buried her face deep into the lush greenness, she inhaled a huge nose-full of wonderful whiffs. She was giddy with excitement and all thoughts of cake flew from her mind as the heady smells rising from the grass took over. Willow’s first moments on the footpath were always the same: one hundred percent nose focus, it was as if her other senses had switched off, as she heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing, but smelt everything. She sought out every tiny drop of aroma and decoded the hidden messages left by all the different creatures who’d passed along the path since her last visit.

  Of most interest were the dogs’ smells. Willow found these easiest to understand. Here was Charlie’s pee, he must have been along already to leave his message. Now, who had he marked over? Whose was that interesting, musky scent? Willow took another deeper sniff, trying to ignore Charlie’s smell, and get below it, to the curious tones lying underneath his big scented pee. It could be… no surely not… Sneakers the Cat! Odd, he’s not usually found on this corner, Willow thought. This is a dangerous spot for him to stop, being the place where all dogs gather and linger on their way to the park.

  What Willow couldn’t know, and her nose was detecting but her brain wasn’t decoding, was that last night while the neighbourhood dogs were all tucked up in their warm beds, Sneakers the Cat sat for five long minutes on this corner. He enjoyed the peace of the spot that the dogs claimed for themselves during the daytime. With his black furry bottom sat comfortably on the thick grass cushion, he had slowly closed his green eyes, tipped back his sleek black head, revealing the white heart-shaped spot on his velvet throat, and taken a long, slow sniff of the cool night air. Unlike the hurried, excitable smelling the dogs did, Sneakers sat almost motionless, drawing in through his snub pink nose, chilled air which carried all the day’s fragrance deep into his mind. He took his time, allowing his brain to filter through the many messages that were bouncing around on the air his nose expertly pulled in.

  Dogs, lots of smelly dogs. That’s what the messages told Sneakers the Cat, as he opened his sharp, bright, emerald eyes and looked up at the starry sky. Dogs bumbling along the path, on their way to the park to run around in pointless frenzies, sometimes chasing balls and other times just each other and, that silly white one always chasing the crows. Didn’t he know birds are not for playing with but for killing? Perched high on the fence that bordered the path and overlooked the park, Sneakers liked to watch the dogs. They never knew he was up there, above them. Although, as they passed by on the path below, just before reaching the main Kettlecroft Park Gate, some did. Some noticed his presence. It was always the sharper ones who caught his scent and stopped, heads tipping back, lifting their twitching noses, looking around, searching for the source of the feline fragrance, before being hurried along by their humans. Last night, when he’d finished taking in the scented messages from the cold night air, Sneakers had smugly sat awhile longer, enjoying the fact he was a cat and needed no human to walk th
e path with him, hurrying him along, like the silly daft dogs did.

  Willow was baffled by Sneakers’ lingering smell from last night at that grassy spot on the corner of the path. She couldn’t work it out. It was cat, definitely cat, but no cat sat there long enough to leave behind so much scent. Oh well, with a shake of her grey head, she moved on, continuing along the path, carefully checking, smell by smell who else had been along, trying to forget the mystery whiff of a cat, sat where no cat usually did.

  5

  He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him

  Hans Christian Andersen,

  The Ugly Duckling

  As Willow made her way along the footpath, the overwhelming excitement of all the smells started to settle. Moving farther away from the stinging concentration of those left on the corner, it made room in her nose for the softer, more familiar messages which wafted up from the grassy edges of the path. As her mind calmed, she found herself thinking back to what she’d heard Patsy and Tom talking about in the house. Patsy had spoken about sad dogs living as prisoners in puppy farms just to make puppies. Did that mean that they never got to do as she was doing right then? Enjoying the smells of the open air, the scents left along a grassy footpath by all the local dogs, foxes, mice, rats and the odd cat passing through?