Walking along the street one day, we noticed people queuing outside a pet shop. And from the window, a long-haired, short-legged, big-eyed pooch stared out at me. I fell in love with him on the spot and I knew then that someday we’d have a dog of our own.
Back home, the Canine Partners charity, which trains dogs for the disabled, were opening a new centre near us. Helper dogs are remarkable. They can pull off socks and shoes, get washing out of a machine, fetch the phone when it rings, cover their owners with a blanket if they’re cold, turn lights on and off and even collect items in the supermarket and put them in the shopping basket. And the centre was looking for volunteers to be puppy foster parents for six months, before the dogs could complete their training.
Ian and I signed up immediately and before we knew it, Emma the golden retriever/labrador cross was coming home with us. That first night we put her little crate — containing a piece of blanket with the scent of her mum — at the foot of our bed and we slept with our heads at the end to be as near her as possible.
It was Christmas and our home town of Bedford was covered in a blanket of snow, but I walked Emma around the garden so she would get used to it. As she hadn’t yet had all her vaccinations we took her out in a carry-bag so that she would get used to traffic sounds and supermarket trips — all part of a helper dog’s future role.
I taught her to take things out of the washing machine. First I’d use a favourite toy, placing it right on the edge of the machine, and showering her with love when she brought it back to me. Gradually I’d put it further inside, until she was happy to put her head completely inside the drum to retrieve it. It is one of the many skills helper dogs have to learn and Emma passed with flying colours.
Before long she could take items of clean laundry out of the machine and put them in the basket, ready to be hung out on the line. She learned to find lost house keys, fetch the phone, remove shoes and socks.
Those first few weeks with Emma were blissfully happy. But things on the baby front were miserable. Out of the blue, we received £10,000 from the sale of my late grandmother’s flat, which we decided to spend on trying IVF treatments. It was a stressful time, but at least we had Emma to comfort us. Then, at a Canine Partner’s meeting one day, the head trainer read out a list of dogs who were nearly ready to leave their foster parents. Emma’s name was at the top. Thanks to her, this had been the happiest three months of my life –and it was over.
About 40 per cent of the dogs who start out training don’t actually make it to be helper dogs — some are too assertive or boisterous, some become too attached to their puppy parents. But Emma was doing so well she would be one of the first to go. You can have another puppy to foster straightaway, they promised.
But I didn’t want to think about another puppy. I only wanted Emma. I sobbed to Ian.
‘I feel like my heart is being ripped out. She’ll think she’s done something wrong and that we don’t want her any more.’
He was suffering too. Emma had become a part of our family. We’d made so many puppy-owner friends and every weekend we took her new places, exploring.
‘We could try to buy her,’ said Ian. ‘We could give them enough money to buy another two puppies or even three or four. Charities always need money.’
‘They couldn’t refuse £10,000 could they?’ I asked.
‘£10,000?’ asked Ian.
‘Yes, the money from my grandmother’s flat we were going to use for IVF – we’ll use that.’
Each puppy was about £500 so that would be 20. Twenty puppies in exchange for one: Emma. That seemed like a good deal to me. Emma was worth so much more than that to me — but surely she couldn’t be worth 20 puppies to the charity and the people they would go on to help?
We wrote to them that night. The days while they made their decision were agonising.
Their decision came back: no. Emma had shown too much potential as a helper dog for them to give up on her now. We were heartbroken.
The day of Emma’s departure came all too soon. All her things were piled up in the hall, ready for her to go. There was so much physical evidence of the giant space she’d occupied in our hearts and lives. I didn’t want to think about how our little house would seem when she was gone.
Emma knew something was up, she wouldn’t take her eyes off me. I was determined not to cry, I wanted her to remember me as happy and smiling. When we arrived at the charity centre I handed over all her favourite toys, stroked her head then walked away to the car. In the rear-view mirror I saw her watching me as I started the engine.
When I got home I sobbed in Ian’s arms. But there wasn’t time to be upset. I had a new puppy to collect – a puppy to learn to love while the shock of losing Emma was still raw.
Freddy was a bright, almost white, wriggling little furry fluff-ball. He looked more like a miniature polar bear than a puppy and was as different from Emma as it was possible to be. He nibbled my long hair and licked my face. But that night, as we bedded him down in his crate in our bedroom he whined, barked and cried so much that I took him downstairs with me and, against all the charity’s rules, slept on the sofa while he slept on the floor next to me.
It would be the first of many sleepless nights as we adjusted to looking after a brand new puppy — and, of course, we fell totally head-over-heels in love with him. He was a model pupil at training classes and because he was so cute was asked to perform at local fetes to encourage other puppy parents to volunteer. We had decided to use the £10,000 for IVF after all but before we could go to a clinic, my latest blood tests dashed our hopes.
It was all too painful. So we devoted ourselves to Freddy. We allowed ourselves to love him and think of him as ours. So when the trainer again pronounced that he’d be recommending him for advanced training at six months old, I knew I couldn’t keep having my heart broken by loving and losing.
‘It’s time we had one of our own,’ Ian said firmly. ‘We need a forever puppy.’ Puppy parenting hadn’t been without its rewards, though. We met Emma’s new owner Mike, a PE teacher in his early 30s who’d broken his neck in a motorcycle accident. Emma had transformed his life. With her help he’d been able to go back into teaching.
He told us, ‘I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have her in my life. She picks up my stick and my keys and takes off my hat, socks and gloves, which is really useful in winter when I have three or four classes outside every day.’
And we knew that Freddy too would go on to change the life of a disabled person or child too.
But this didn’t prepare us for the wrench of handing him over.
We drove him to the home where he would spend the next six months and he ran four laps of the garden. I called him over and said my goodbyes, whispering in his ear how much I loved him and how even a forever puppy could never take his place. As we drove away, I watched Freddy playing in the rear view mirror. He didn’t even see us leave.
By now we had found a respectable breeder who would have a litter just before Christmas. When the new puppies arrived we dashed to see them. They clambered all over each other, making tiny mewling sounds. Blind, eyelids closed, with tiny, pink-veined ears and the softest of coats.
I picked one up and as I held the warm body close the puppy nestled into me. A gentle smile of pleasure lit up Ian’s face. ‘We’re going to be calling our puppy Traffy,’ he told the surprised breeder. ‘It’s short for Old Trafford,’ I explained. Not everyone was such a Manchester United fan as my husband.
We collected Traffy just before Christmas and, although we had a puppy crate, I slept downstairs on the sofa with her. With a few whimpers for her mum and siblings, she slept. But I didn’t. I was aware of every twitch and movement.
The next day, I was dizzy with lack of sleep, but ecstatic. For the first time I could fall totally in love with my own puppy. Wherever I went she came too. When I was working on the computer she’d fall asleep on my lap, when I was cooking she’d be just feet away.
It was Christmas again and I often thought of the first time we brought Emma home in the snow. But as I looked around at our tree, the decorations, at Ian watching Christmas telly with Traffy, I thought there was nothing else I could want in the world.
‘You know what?’ I said to Ian. ‘I don’t want to keep trying for a baby, I don’t want to have IVF.’ ‘You’re right,’ said Ian, drawing me close to him. ‘We have all the family we need now.’
