by Megan Rix
Outside the shop, we looked at each other: what on earth were we meant to do now? All we’d seen of the island was the beach where we’d got off the ferry, the dog-hire place, the restaurant and the shops adjoining it—plus what we thought might possibly be a rent-a-cat place. Although we hadn’t seen anyone walking about with a cat, anything seemed possible. We headed to the beach, nodding and smiling to other dog hirers we passed, proud, like them, of our new “dog owner” status. At this point Goro, who had seen it all before and knew far more than us about what was supposed to happen during an hour’s hire, decided he’d had enough of walking. We tried tempting him to budge with some of his treats, but he was having none of it. In his eyes it was very clear: there was no bad feeling—he simply didn’t feel like walking anymore and therefore he wasn’t going to.
“Come on, Goro.”
Goro stayed where he was.
“You try.”
I held on to the lead.
“Come on, Goro. Come on, there’s a good boy.”
Goro looked at me with his beautiful melting-chocolate brown eyes. I crouched down and he waddled over to me.
“Are you tired out?” I said, stroking him.
That he really seemed to enjoy. His head came up for more and I swear he had a smile on his face.
“Would you like to be carried?” I said, and lifted him into my arms. Goro was the perfect dog for carrying.
He snuggled into me and didn’t wriggle at all—apart from when he tried to give my ear a lick.
“What shall we do now?” I said.
“Pub?” The Englishman’s unfailing antenna for the hostelry had located one a little farther down the beach. As we sat down outside, people at the other tables made appreciative noises and smiled at Goro, who accepted his due and sat on the tabletop, soaking up the attention while eating the tiny pieces of chicken we offered him.
All too soon our hour was up and we watched him walk back through the partition to his kennel with regret. If we had a dog, I said, maybe he’d be like Goro. Ian, though, couldn’t see himself owning such a little dog: he wanted something bigger and “more manly.” And, anyway, having a dog would be such a tie—we’d never have been able to come to Japan if we’d had a dog at home. Now wasn’t the time, but maybe one day. Maybe one day we’d have a dog like Goro.
By the middle of the next week, Ian’s business in Japan was done and it was time for him to fly home. I, however, had bought a round-the-world ticket and was taking an extended holiday. My flight left almost a day later than his, so I kissed Ian goodbye, put him in a taxi to Narita and went back to the hotel room where I immediately changed the screen-saver on my laptop to a photo of him and Goro. I would look at it frequently in the weeks to come; every time I did, it made me smile.
I flew to countries where I already had friends—America, Ecuador and New Zealand. In Ecuador I stayed with an old school-friend, Susan, a midwife who’d been trying to have children for most of her adult life. She’d tried just about everything, from diet to acupuncture to reflexology, as well as an endless round of fertility drugs and IVF treatments. Her husband, Graham, worked overseas and she’d been a midwife in Brazil, France, Peru and now Ecuador. Susan took me with her to the small, privately funded orphanage where she’d started volunteering. I just loved helping out at the orphanage for the week I was there: I’ve always had an affinity with children and for years taught children with profound learning difficulties.
Susan was hoping that now she and her husband were in Ecuador they’d be able to adopt there. They’d inquired about adopting in England the year before but had been told that they wouldn’t even be eligible to start the process until they’d had a year free of fertility treatments—and Susan hadn’t a clue where they’d be by then. It had been a very disheartening experience.
At the orphanage there was a six-month-old baby girl who had been given up for adoption. “I’m hoping they’ll let me adopt the baby,” Susan said. “She’s perfect.”
One little girl was so pleased to see Susan she crawled across the floor as fast as she could to get to her. Eliana was almost three and had had a difficult start in life. Both of her parents were long-term drug addicts who’d been arrested for possession when Eliana was a baby and sent to prison. Eliana had, while in prison with her mother, caught pneumonia three times and had been transferred to the hospital where she became malnourished due to lack of care by her relatives, surviving for days at a time with no food and only an IV drip. When the orphanage was called in, nobody had changed her nappy for a week, and she looked more like a newborn than a seven-month-old, so small and fragile was she.
The prognosis for Eliana had not been good. She had never been expected to hold her head up, walk or speak, and she was never expected to progress further than a typical four-month-old baby due to the damage caused by her parents’ drug use.
But no one had told that to Eliana, and she was setting about proving them wrong. When I met her, she’d learned to crawl, despite damage to her hip joints, and understood what was being said. She let everyone know how she felt without the need for words and ate her solid food with gusto.
She wriggled across the floor toward us, absolutely determined to get to her favorite person, and was grinning with delight when she reached Susan.
Eliana was clinging to Susan’s legs and looking up at her with her big brown eyes, pleading. Susan knew what she wanted.
“OK, we’ll do some coloring.”
Susan was full of positivity. She’d been through so many difficulties and heartaches, and was completely devoted to all the children in her care; and now, after so long, it seemed as if she and her husband would finally be getting their dream. I left on the plane home newly convinced that, despite everything, things would work out for Ian and me too.
A few weeks after I arrived home, Ian gave a shout from upstairs and came running down with the paper.
“Helper Dogs are opening a new satellite center in the East Midlands. Look, they’ve put an advert in.”
We’d seen a program on TV about Helper Dogs—one of the many charities that provides expertly trained dogs for disabled people—and had been amazed at what the dogs were able to learn and the bond that developed between the dogs and their owners.
“It couldn’t hurt to go and see,” I said, taking the paper from Ian and looking at the square-bordered advert.
“Couldn’t hurt at all,” Ian agreed.
The advert said Helper Dogs wanted volunteers in our area to become puppy parents. Puppy parents looked after puppies for six months or so, before the puppy either went on to stay with another volunteer family, or to undertake its advanced training at the Helper Dogs HQ in Hertfordshire.
The new center was holding an open afternoon in a few days’ time for prospective parents. However, since I’d never been responsible for a dog for more than an hour, we decided to phone to find out more. Nervous, I dialed the number and waited.
“Answering machine,” I said, putting the phone down. I didn’t want to leave a message.
A few minutes later, it rang. A Scottish voice, amid a commotion and sounds of rustling and barking in the background:
“Hi, I’m Jamie, I run the Fenston Helper Dogs Center. Sorry, couldn’t get to the phone quick enough. Are you interested in being a puppy parent?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Well, maybe . . . I’m thinking of coming to the open afternoon—where exactly do I go?”
Ian couldn’t come because he had to work, so I drove over to the center before its grand opening to check out exactly where it was. Still, I ended up being late on the day and just caught the official opening by the mayor. Then Helper Dogs gave a demonstration. I watched in amazement as dogs opened doors and turned on lights and helped their owners to take off their socks, shoes, hats, and coats. They could find keys, bring the phone, press emergency alarm buttons, take washing from washing machines, and make their disabled owner’s life better in a hundred different ways.
Everyone who h
ad a Helper Dog sang its praises.
“I couldn’t go out before I had him, but now I go out every day,” one lady said. “He’s my life.”
“If it wasn’t for her, I’d have no reason to wake up in the morning,” said a man confined to a wheelchair by cerebral palsy.
A young man with no arms and legs had tears streaming down his face as he told us how his dog brought his prosthetic limbs to him each morning.
“She’s everything to me. My whole world.”
I blinked back my own tears and swallowed hard. I now wanted to volunteer to become a puppy parent more than ever.
2
Rusty, the curly coated golden retriever, looked up at me with his big brown eyes, silently beseeching me for one of the treats I had secreted in my pocket. We were in the Helper Dogs center and I was putatively in charge of Rusty at an obedience class, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that really he was in charge of me.
It had been a whirlwind few weeks. After my first visit to the center, I had come home ready to beg Ian to agree to taking in a puppy. Luckily, he’d guessed as much and had put a bottle of champagne in the fridge as I’d left the house. We’d decided to take the leap, opened the champagne and toasted becoming puppy parents. Since then, I’d been driving to see Helper Dogs once or twice a week, and, at Jamie’s suggestion, I’d started attending puppy-training classes and was throwing myself into a new doggy world. I still didn’t have a puppy, hence there was Rusty. Rusty’s family had divorced when he was a puppy and neither husband nor wife had been able to keep him. He had ended up with Jamie and was an ideal training partner for me because he could do everything perfectly already.
November was dragging to its end. It was dark and cold, and the Christmas shopping hadn’t kicked in yet—let alone the Christmas cheer—so I was pleased to have something nice to do. Having had a cursory look around the local pet shop, it was already promising to be an expensive Christmas: we had puppy supplies to buy and a long list of home improvements on which to get started. When I phoned Jamie to put our names on the official puppy parent waiting list, he had announced that he was going to pay us a home visit to oversee the preparations that would ready the house for its new occupant, and to chat about what being a puppy parent would involve. Two days of extreme tidying ensued, during which I did my best to imagine what the perfect puppy home would look like, and then tried to re-create it in our little terraced house.
“He’s not going to be looking in our cupboards,” Ian had said, trying to reason with me as I chucked away out-of-date spices and piles of old magazines. Still, it was important to put our best face on, I thought, as I invested in a new mop, cleaning products and dusters. Escape-proofing the garden was most important, I decided, and there was an interesting-looking space behind the shed and garage wall where an inquisitive puppy could easily squeeze in and get stuck. Fortunately, the pimply assistant in the DIY superstore had been only too happy to supply piles of fencing and a padlock for the back gate.
Jamie’s visit came around quickly. On the appointed Friday, the doorbell rang, and I opened the door to see him standing there in his Helper Dogs fleece, jeans and sensible boots, confident I’d done everything short of moving house to be as ready as possible for the pup. I affected the nonchalant air of a person who had always lived in serene tidiness.
“Hello, sorry I’m late. Bit of a dog emergency,” Jamie said as he breezed in.
I rearranged the biscuits I’d bought in case he was peckish, to cover for the fact that I’d been waiting anxiously since breakfast. It was nearly lunchtime. Perhaps I should offer him a sandwich? Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I had any bread. How could I have forgotten the bread? I hoped he wouldn’t think the worst of me because of it. Back turned, heart racing, I boiled the kettle, while he told me a little about what being a puppy parent would entail.
“You’ll either be given a very young puppy, which you’ll keep for around six months.”
I nodded. “Cu-u-ute.”
“Or else you’ll be given an older one that you’ll keep till it’s about a year old and goes off for its final training.”
Jamie took a swig of tea.
“I’d like a younger one,” I said.
“Depends what’s available,” Jamie said. “Head Office decides who gets what, not me. Young ones are sweet but a lot of work—and very time consuming. Little puppies need to be taken out to the loo every few hours, so there won’t be much sleep for you for the first few weeks . . .”
I didn’t care about that.
“. . . and there will probably be more than a few little accidents in the house . . .”
“We’re thinking of getting laminate flooring.”
“. . . and little puppies chew. A lot.” He’d spotted the computer wires. Ian was obsessed with gadgets and hung on to his old computers like they were his children. There were wires and leads for every occasion in every corner. They seemed to have a life of their own, reproducing and popping up in unexpected places as soon as your back was turned.
“I’ll get Ian to box them in.”
“You’ll need a gate to stop the puppy from going up the stairs,” Jamie continued. “And if you’re given a baby puppy it’ll need to sleep in your room for the first few nights, so you’ll hear it when it wakes up . . .”
I nodded.
“And you’ll need to take it to the toilet straightaway so it doesn’t ever mess in its bed—you’ll need to carry it up and down the stairs. Stairs aren’t good for a little puppy’s joints, especially the Labradors, Golden Retrievers and Labradoodles we use.”
We took our tea out for a tour of the garden, a square lawn fringed with dying bedding plants, a new rockery with perky shoots poking through, an arbor seat nestled into the bushes, a patio, a shed and a couple of trees.
“Where’s the toilet area going?” Jamie asked. Helper Dogs needed an area covered with play sand or bark chippings, at least a meter square. I’d never toilet trained a dog before, but it couldn’t be that hard, I told myself.
“Under the lilac tree?” I said. The tree was near the house and the patio.
Jamie frowned. “No, I don’t think that’ll work. You don’t want to be sitting almost on top of the puppy’s loo, do you? The ideal place, I suppose, would be down there.” He pointed to our recently built rockery. “But it’d mean . . .”
“Oh, we’re not bothered about that old thing,” I said.
We went back inside and I made some more tea.
“I’ll need to meet Ian, of course,” he said. “Bring him along to the center some time.”
My head was spinning. There was so much to think about and organize. So many things to buy for such a small creature.
He caught my pensive expression. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be great,” he said. “I’m just a bit concerned because you haven’t had a dog before.”
I bit my tongue and resisted saying anything about Goro.
“When d’you think we’ll get our puppy?”
“Not for a while yet—maybe sometime after Christmas. It depends when they’re available. Could be March.”
That long? I sighed.
So here I was, three weeks later, filling my waiting time by learning about dogs at the Helper Dog class. Rusty now made me feel very welcome at the center. He recognized me as the lady who brought him nice things, and he hurried over every time I walked through the door. He’d do anything for a treat and spent his life on a diet. I wasn’t so keen on, indeed was a little frightened of, Jamie’s other dog, a German Shepherd called Queenie. Barely used to dogs at all, I certainly wasn’t habituated to gruff Alsatians. How did easygoing Rusty manage to live with her? I never saw the two of them playing together, and although she was often at the Helper Dogs center, the other dogs treated her with deference or gave her a wide berth.
Each Helper Dogs session began with tea and coffee and the chance for puppy parents to report on how their puppies were progressing. We were early, so next to me and Rus
ty there were only two young puppies, Dylan and Daisy, and an older puppy called Arnie, who’d been pulled out of advanced training for a while because he kept barking all the time. Julia had Dylan, a Flat-coated Retriever. He had long legs that reminded me of Bambi. Len, a retired insurance salesman, had Daisy, a cute, chocolate-brown Labrador. I loved hearing how the puppies got on each week.
“I thought you might be interested in this,” Julia said to me one week, and she gave me a timesheet of everything she did with Dylan during a typical day. It looked like a full-time job with a strong emphasis on toilet training.
I wasn’t quite so keen on the other class I went to each week—the clicker training class. Or so keen on Frank, the other Helper Dogs official who had moved down from Scotland with Jamie and now shared management of the training center. While Jamie concentrated on the Helper Dogs work, Frank ran the regular obedience classes for dogs of all kinds in the daytimes. These included agility and clicker work. Clicker work involved clicking a small handheld device followed immediately by giving the dog a treat. The clicking sound meant “good work.”
“The idea is that you reward Rusty as soon as he does what you asked of him,” Frank sighed as he explained it for the twentieth time, loudly, in front of the whole class. “If you’re late with your click or click for inappropriate behavior then your dog will never learn what’s expected from him—will he?”
I looked down at Rusty. He gave me a consoling look back. If it wasn’t for Rusty, I might have been thrown out of the class as a hopeless case. Rusty was so smart he got just about everything right, even when I clicked in the wrong place.
As the class was finishing, I saw Ian at the door. We were off to the coach station to pick his mother up. Her visit was a big deal; because they’d treated him unspeakably when he was little, Ian still had trouble spending much time with his parents. His father, Bernie, and aunt, Mabel, had been to visit while I was in Japan, so I’d been spared some awkward family time—although Auntie Mabel had often looked after him and his sister during the toughest of times. Now, Barbara was coming to stay, despite Ian putting her off as much as he could. We were both apprehensive, though I was determined to make the best of the few days and get them over with without a fuss. We’d decided to go to the station together for moral support.