3000 Dead Dogs

Imprimatur

It’s been almost a week since she died and the sound of her claws clicking across the floor still hasn’t left us. I still half imagine she is dozing in another room, expecting her to reappear at my heel, catch a glimpse of her through a crack in the door or find her watching from…

Testament

Amidst the seemingly endless reports of puppy farms, cruelty and neglect I sometimes try to remember that there are still countless dog owners who do care deeply for their pets. In a Facebook post recently where a member of a Dalmatian Owners group noted the death of their 15 year old Dalmatian, the expressions of sympathy…

Fahrenheit 451

Yesterday’s news. I came across the 2015 Dog Control Statistics for Ireland. Superficially at least, the headline figure in the Euthanasia section seemed like good news, half what it was when we first adopted KiKi, standing at 1,824 rather than in excess of three thousand dead dogs. Move over a couple of columns though and…

The Last of The Name

There’s no doubt that, through centuries of domestication, we have developed a very particular connection with dogs. We have bred and refined their characteristics to suit our own, human ends. Whether to hunt, to guard, to herd or retrieve, we have bent their development to our needs.The degree to which their evolution has been manipulated by…

The Twilight Saga

It has taken three weeks to sit down and write this post. Django bolted. Gone into the darkening evening and out of sight. Where I stand, the road forks in three directions and I have long since lost sight of him. Leica is stumbling as we go, our attempts to follow this far have been…

5420

Five thousand four hundred and twenty days give or take since we first saw her. Ninety miles or so from here, with her sister Flash and her mother Cindy, now both gone. Leica turns fifteen today in the company of our two ‘rescue’ dogs, KiKi age four and six months and Django age two and seven…

Forty Days and Forty Nights

Forty Days and Forty Nights with the boy we know as Django. It’s been epic. Charlton Heston Biblical Epic. He has his own food bowl, bed, blanket,rope toys, collar, a new harness, and still has all the common sense and manners of a four month old pup. Trouble is, as I’ve said before, he stands almost 24…

The Dimming of The Day

It seems like forever ago that she came to live with us, eight weeks old, with her sister Flash. Inquisitive, gentle, intelligent, affectionate and full of mischief. Leica’s world is dimming now as her eyesight and her hearing slowly desert her and she becomes ever more frail. Bonded to her sister since birth, separated from her…

Other Lives, Loved

In the two year life of this blog, I’ve talked mainly about our personal, direct, real life experiences with our dogs. At the heart of it though, the issue that prompted its inception, is the needless euthanasia of so many dogs around the country, and our apparent willingness as a society to allow it to…

Counter Terrorism

Well, no-one said it would be dull, that’s for sure. Or easy. Or quick. The ongoing fight against the terror that is Django’s food lust goes on. He’s been with us now a little over three weeks and his relentless and dare I say dogged pursuit of foodstuffs continues. He has gained a little weight…

Solitary Man

Between May and September of this year the dog we now call ‘Django’ was cared for by ASH Animal Rescue. He’s been with us for two weeks as of today and we are all still getting to know each other. His recent past would have involved a very different life experience, and sadly a great…

The Department of Corrections

This boy needs one of those orange jumpsuits you see in American prison TV shows. Django is an ideal candidate for a ‘Reality TV’ show all on his own. We knew we would have some issues with rehoming him after more than 4 months in ASH Animal Rescue, but he is still full of surprises….

The Third Man

Almost 15 years ago, when we first thought we might get a dog we tried to decide what it’s name might be. In a glass jar, like some Xmas party game, we put slips of paper with our ideas written on them. Frida (Kahlo), Georgia (O’Keeffe), Ansel (Adams), Cole (Weston), Minor (White), all names of artists…

The Adjustment Bureau

As we expected, the introduction of a third dog was going to bring up some issues. Once more we have a dog whose first two years we know only a little of. Like KiKi too, this dog has spent the last several months in a pen and is going to need time to readjust to domestic…

Kindred

One more week will see the second anniversary of KiKi’s arrival here with us. Two years ago she was still in the care of ASH Animal Rescue in County Wicklow, two days ago, we went back with her. In her life with us KiKi has been an unexpected mixture of delight and at times, distress….

Indivisible

It’s hard to imagine the it’s now a little more than two years now since Flash left us. The strangest, sweetest little dog that she was. Her sister Leica carries on, older and increasingly frail now she shares her days with KiKi and at night they too huddle as foxes for warmth.

E Pluribus Unum : Out of many, One

Since this blog first began it has dealt in the main with our experiences with KiKi and our mutual adaptations and re-learning. Now, almost two years have passed since Flash died and the journey we found ourselves on started, finding KiKi and learning something of the reality of dog euthanasia here in Ireland. Yet however special we…

Total Recall

OK, I admit the title may be a little misleading. Perhaps “50% Recall” would be more accurate, just not as catchy. KiKi turned four last week and the past 18 months or so of living with her have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Her recall behaviour remains selective, but it’s perfectly clear that…

Catch 22

Since she first arrived to live with us, it has been clear that KiKi found the world outside utterly absorbing. Her enthusiasm to scent and track, her eagerness to explore new places and her seemingly unbounded enjoyment in being loose to run have been evident from the outset, leading us to imagine that perhaps her previous…

Nearly Normal

It might not seem like a big deal to most dog owners, but after 18 months of life with KiKi, seeing her remain entirely calm in the sudden presence of a strange dog is a significant milestone. We’ve seen this crusty old boy regularly taking himself for a walk for years now. Leica seems to…

Tall tales

In fourteen plus years with our dogs, trips to the vet haven’t been too common and for the most part only a few of them have been real emergencies. The usual stuff you might expect, cuts and scrapes mostly. This week however, was a little different. Coming home we were greeted as usual by an excited KiKi…

The Gift

Leica and Flash were intended as a gift to mark Martha’s birthday a little over 14 years ago. When we lived and worked in Scotland it had been impractical for us to have a dog, so when we moved to Ireland and the circumstances allowed, that all changed. It seems difficult to separate the two…

Invisible Thread

When we first decided to bring KiKi to live with us we knew that our relationship with her was likely to be very different at first than had been the case with our previous dogs. The first two and a half years of her life were spent elsewhere, with a different family, and we knew…

Canis Lupus Familiaris

The scientific name for ‘dog’ generally, specifically and more usually applied to domesticated dogs, is Canis Lupus Familiaris. I studied Latin at school, a long time ago. It’s usefulness has has been questionable, pub quizzes aside. The ability to understand the root of words in more modern languages hasn’t really done a great deal for me as…

Crazy Heart

This past year with KiKi has been more fraught than I could ever have imagined. At times her behaviour has strained relationships with friends and family members. She is not Flash, she is not Leica. She is, however, ours. Entirely. We adopted her, in some peoples opinions, hastily. Time though, was not on our side….

Talking Dog

So every Spring, the pounds and rescues fill up with more abandoned dogs. Anyone who has owned a dog for long is going to know that housetraining a dog isn’t usually a long term process yet still people will dump their dogs if they are not clean about the house, as if expecting this part…

A Medicine For Melancholy

Through all the difficult times since we brought KiKi home, it’s easy perhaps to overlook just how much she has brought to us. The loss of Flash was incredibly hard for us to deal with, so much a part of our life as she had been. KiKi is a very different character, although her mischievousness and…

Early Learning Centre

Anyone who has owned a dog for any length of time understands well enough that ‘training’ them is an ongoing process. New situations and experiences will usually require some adjustment time, but a well trained dog can be expected to cope with most things, and knowing their character or nature can help predict how they will…

Where The Wild Things Are

There’s proving to be a great deal we don’t properly understand about KiKi, and it’s certainly more complex than we were initially prepared for. Still, there are pleasures to be had in what we do know of her. At just over three years of age her enthusiasm for life is boundless. She leaves us in awe…

At bay

We have been trying now, for what seems like a long time, to manage KiKi’s behaviour. Her unpredictability has been a major factor. The struggle to understand how she feels and why she reacts as she does goes on. In broad terms, obviously, surprises don’t usually turn out to be good experiences, that much is…

Lost in Translation

In her past life, before us, before ASH, KiKi had apparently been kept by a family from Finland. I joked that we might need a phrasebook to help us communicate better with her, that English might not be her first language. At times, even now, she simply stares, unmoving as you ask something of her,…

The Forgotten

When I first started to think about writing this blog, as is fairly obvious I hope from the name, it was on my mind that so many thousands of dogs were dying needlessly each year in shelters and pounds across the country. Realistically I can’t imagine it was ever likely that KiKi become a part…

The Chosen One

When we adopted KiKi our motivations were not selfless, we were not “rescuing” her in the way that many dogs are genuinely rescued from being euthanised. Rather we were very, very specific. Rightly or not we had come to believe that we needed a new companion for Leica and that in a female Dalmatian we…

Wounds

Looking after a dog, or indeed dogs, involves a great many things, visits to the Vet being just one of them. Aside from the routine vaccinations, there are likely to be other, less predictable issues too. Flash really should have had a ‘Frequent Flyer’ badge of some sort in light of her many trips arising…

Queen of Diamonds

In the 1962 film, “The Manchurian Candidate”, one of the leading characters, Raymond Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey) returns from the Korean War, ostensibly as a hero. Behind this facade though, the darker truth is that he has been ‘brainwashed’ and will, when triggered by the sight of a Queen of Diamonds playing card, carry…

If not now

As Flash and Leica grew older we were not unaware of the fact that the day would come when we would lose one of them. Even as they passed into their second decade with us they remained lively and vigorous. Flash did, slowly at first, begin to show some signs that her age was telling. Never…