What sort of pets did you have when you were young?

Ever since I can remember we have had dogs in our family.

When I was born we lived in Portsmouth. My mum had a Golden Retriever called Honey who was lovely. We also had a large golden Labrador called Linus who actually belonged to my aunt and uncle (R&D). He chewed all my toys! We also had a cat – a big ginger tabby called TC – very imaginative – he also belonged to R&D.

When we moved to Malawi we had to leave Honey with my gran – and Linus too obviously, as he wasn’t ours anyway. My dad already had two dogs there – a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Henry, and a golden retriever crossed with god knows what called Eska.

My dad had a cat called Bert – he had sort of Siamese/Burmese colouring and was a cool cat – he ate spicy food and his favourite was samosas!

I’m not too sure on the chronology of the next lot of dogs, but after that we had Koma (beautiful in Chichewa – the local language), a Red Setter puppy. He was very sweet and his favourite pastime was chasing butterflies! He died at about a year old from rabies. He had what is called dumb rabies, which means that the dog becomes paralysed from the muzzle backwards. So, there was no danger of being bitten, but the worst thing was that to prove it was rabies (to qualify for the vaccine ourselves) we had to wait until he died from it. He could not be put down. Luckily, I don’t remember any of it – I was only very small. He did eventually die, and it was proved to have rabies. He must have been bitten by a rat or a mongoose or something in the garden. I do remember that we were all heartbroken.
We then had to organise vaccines, and not just for us. We were told to count all the people who had been in our house for the past three weeks (not sure of timescale but something like that). All these other people had to have the vaccine too. Some of them were kids who were at boarding school in UK, and had been out on holiday. So, their parents had to contact the school and get them to organise it – easier said than done, especially then. I mean, this must be around 25 years ago at least. The vaccines hurt – big time. They were in the underside of the forearm, the needle went in quite shallowly, and you ended up with like a big bubble under your skin. It hurt like hell, and for a while I think we had to have one a day, then one a week, then a yearly booster. Something like that anyway – it may have been less, but it was a traumatic experience and I just remember tons of them. My mum used to buy me an Enid Blyton book each time – I got quite a collection! It left me with a complete phobia of needles though, which I have to this day.

Anyway, back to pets. I have no idea when any of the earlier pets died, except for Koma, but I was only very small. At some point we got a cat – he was sort of a black tabby I think, and we called him Huggy Bear after the character in some TV show. I don’t know much about 80’s TV either because we just didn’t get that in Malawi! He was a cool cat. We also got a German Shepherd puppy who we called Kali (fierce in Chichewa). She was a big softy, and slept on my bed.
A while after we got her, some friends of ours left, and they had a big, fierce German Shepherd called Samson. We had to travel up to Lilongwe (the capital) to collect him, and he had been doped up for the journey. When we got home, and the drugs wore off he was a completely different dog. All the ferociousness had disappeared (apart from when he was being a guard dog!), and he followed my mum everywhere, even crying outside the toilet if she was in there!
Also, around this time, we rescued another Red Setter, an elderly dog, called Tasha. She was very sweet, but totally dippy!

When we left Malawi, we just had Kali, Samson and Tasha left. We homed Tasha with my friend R’s parents, and Kali and Samson went to my other friend L’s parents. So it worked out beautifully all round.

When we got to Scotland it took a little while to get a dog. All our belongings were being transported across the high seas in a crate, so there wasn’t much we could do until we had turned our house into a home. When it finally did arrive, and everything felt right, my mum and dad came home one day with a tiny black Labrador puppy. He was adorable. He was (technically) my dad’s dog, and he named him Chaka Zulu, after the biggest, blackest bugger he could think of. That’s not meant to be un-PC at all by the way! Anyway, my dad was the only one who ever called him Chaka – his name very quickly got shortened to Lulu – not very butch for the big, black dog he turned into. But he was Lulu until the day he died – now more commonly known as Saint Lulu! He was definitely the most intelligent dog I have ever had – I swear he knew everything you were talking about, and during my teenage years I quite often sobbed out my woes to him, and he’d put his head on my knee and look up at me with those big dark brown eyes and make me feel all better!
At about the same time as we got Lulu, we also got Bracken, a Golden Retriever puppy. She was lovely, and we tried to have puppies with her, but in the end only two survived. She died herself at two years old from cancer. It was really my first experience of death.

We got another retriever quite a while later. She was a Camrose retriever, which meant she was almost white instead of golden. She was lovely, although she definitely had a mind of her own! We eventually tried the puppy thing again with her, but again it didn’t work. Out of 10 puppies, only one survived, so of course, we kept him and called him Harvey. He was very sweet, but a total mummy’s boy! He would hide behind her if he thought he was in trouble – even when he got bigger than her!
These three dogs, Lulu, Barley and Harvey, lasted well into my adulthood, and we actually brought them to France with us. Barley got tick fever after six months here and died. She could have been saved, as we have since found out, but the vet did not want to do anything to save her, as she was 12yrs old. Then, two months later, Lulu had a stroke and died. He was 14 and a half.

Left on his own, Harvey stopped eating because he was pining for his mum and his friend. We ended up going to the SPA to rescue a dog, and rescued two! We got a Pyrenean Mountain Dog who we called Ben – of indeterminate age, and an 8-month-old pup who was a spaniel up to his knees and an Alsatian on top! We called him Fleet. The SPA told us that Fleet had kennel cough, but he was dead within 10 days – our new vet said it was not kennel cough after all, but distemper – a highly infectious canine disease. We had to bleach the entire house to ensure that Ben and Harvey didn’t get it. That was awful.
After a couple of years I got a golden Labrador puppy, and called her Champers, because she was Champagne coloured! Then we got another golden Labrador called Islay – yes, the same as Isla – she was about 6yrs old when we got her, so it was much too late to change her name!!
Anyway, Ben died suddenly one day – the vet said it was probably a heart attack, and we never knew his age exactly, but giant dogs don’t have a very long lifespan.

We now have Islay, Champers and Murphy – a dopey Newfoundland.

We also have several cats now – Pepper, Spice, Stompy (their kitten – the others we found homes for), Thomas (Isla’s cat) and two gentleman callers that we have called Ralph (pronounced the posh way – Rafe) and Julian because they seem like a pair of cads!

This has gone way beyond my childhood animals, but once I started I couldn’t stop until I got to the end!