Someone new has come to live at our house. We think he’s rather special, even though we’re still only at the ‘getting to know you’ stage.

It is now around 10 years since we had to give up our dogs when we lost our home and had to live with some good friends for a while. Both Shadow, our bearded collie, and Jessie, our ‘we-were-never-quite-sure-what’s-in-there’ dog, were both rescue dogs, and it really hurt to have to give them up…it felt like a sort of betrayal.

So, here we are with another rescued bearded collie, Sam by name (he was called Harvey, but…). He also has a sad story. It seems he was the much loved pet of a 12 year old boy, who had him as a pup. Clearly he was not so popular with the boy’s parents, who made the boy solely responsible for everything about him, including taking him back to the breeder when he ‘got to much for him’…I am I confess, biased, and wonder at the sort of people who fail to support a 12 year old in caring for a notoriously mischievous breed of dog, and I can really imagine how he would have felt as he took his dog back (when our dogs had to be returned I was similarly cowardly…Wendy did the deed! I remember how she felt…). I hope I said all that with some grace…see the previous post…

I am also forced to say that the unknown 12 year old did a magnificent job. Having rescued beardies before, we both marvelled at the well-behaved (relatively), calm (equally relatively) and wonderfully trained (recall needs a bit…a lot of work) dog we received.
The boy was a hero! I doubt if he’ll read this, but if he does, or if you know him, he should know how grateful we are. Our last beardie, Shadow, was re-homed with a family who had just lost their beardie to cancer, so we know he went to a home where he was needed. Our loss enriched someone else (sorry about the swimming in the neighbours pond…we did tell you how much he loved to swim).

Betrayal, it seems also has two sides. I’m glad we have the opportunity to love a dog that was loved and tragically lost to someone else. You cannot imagine just how much this particularly means to Wendy. I just hope the mystery owner has it made up to him, too.