Duchess (On the
Left) Apollo (on the right)
Duchess was our first dog and we got her soon after we got our own house.
She came from Batersea Dogs home.
I took a Friday afternoon off work and went to have a
look at the dogs.
It was not a pretty site, all
these perfectly good dogs booted out because people
could be bothered to take responsibility for the cute
puppy who grew into a bigger dog than they could cope
with Duchess was the only dog that would bark at me
all the others went very quiet hoping they would go
home with you.
I however wanted a dog with a voice. And duchess had a deep bark, but eventually she backed off and went quieter. If she hadn't I would have walked away from her.
But I brought her back to Kent
were we were living at the time and she followed me
around for a week or so and settled nicely in with us.
A Dog got into our back garden and
the first we knew of it she came back in the house
panting heavily, but we guessed what had happened and
9 weeks later she gave birth to 15 puppies. 4 of whom
were adopted by a family whose dog only had one puppy,
so they all survived.
The other dog in the picture
Apollo was one of her sons and we soon realised he
would be staying with us.
Eventually came home from work to discover Duchess out of it in her basket obviously she had had a fit or a stroke and we got her to the vet out of hours. I had been talking to her since I got home and she slowly came out of it.
The bad news was she had suffered
brain damage and I didn't want here to spend her
remaining time as a vegetable and I wanted to remember
her as the active dog she always was. So I stayed with
her and spoke to her till the end.
Steve.