The Dog With Nine Lives Read online

  Lindy, however, was a different matter. She was having a whale of a time. She charged up and down barking with excitement and completely deaf to my calls. The mallards seemed to be teasing her, taking off when she got close and landing a few feet ahead of her on the water, but still out of catching range.

  This must have been frustrating. And then to my amazement, because Lindy had never been over-keen on water, she started to swim after one of them. She still had no hope of catching it, but now I was worried. The mallard with its blue and green head and yellow beak swam serenely along and Lindy’s brown head bobbed determinedly after it.

  She was out of her depth and although the river was shallow at this point it was much deeper a little further along.

  I shouted at her to come back, but she was way too engrossed in the chase. Adam and I, complete with the rest of the dogs, ran along the river bank. As it bent round to the right we could see the current grew stronger.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Adam said reassuringly. ‘Dogs are good swimmers.’ Which was just as well, because Lindy was now way out in the middle of the river, paddling after the mallard for all she was worth. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to get back to the bank even if she wanted to, which she evidently didn’t.

  ‘I’ll have to go after her,’ I said to Adam, not relishing the idea one bit. It probably wasn’t deep enough to get out of my depth, but it was very cold, not to mention muddy and slippery. I’d had dealings with this river before. I’d once had to pull Katie out of it when she’d got stuck in some reeds, a bit further along.

  ‘I don’t suppose you fancy doing it?’ I added hopefully.

  ‘She’s your dog.’ Adam grinned at me. ‘You’re the one who brought her back from Greece.’

  ‘I should have left her there,’ I muttered as I stripped off my nice warm coat. I wanted something dry for later. I left Adam holding the dogs and ran a bit further along the river. Lindy was still happily swimming, although the mallard must have been nearly out of sight.

  The river bent round to the right and I decided my best bet was to head her off downstream. With one last rueful look at my trainers, which would be ruined after this little expedition, I waded in. I hoped Lindy might abandon the chase and just come to me when she saw me in the water.

  No such luck. She didn’t even turn her head. The water was very cold. I felt its chill rising up around my knees and the bottom was a slippery gooey mass of mud. This was going to be such fun.

  ‘Lindy,’ I yelled again, aware of a couple of fishermen a few hundred yards upstream staring at me in amazement. ‘Get back here, now!’

  ‘It was possible to drown in a few feet of water,’ I mused, as I slipped and slid after my errant hound, although it was highly unlikely.

  ‘Lindy,’ I shouted, the cold making my voice crosser than I’d intended – not that I wasn’t cross, but I knew from experience that shrieking furiously at a dog does not entice it to come back to you.

  I was in just over my knees before she turned towards me. I was too far away to see her expression, but I suspected she was probably surprised. Or perhaps she thought I’d come to help with the chase. Whatever she thought she’d evidently had enough of swimming – or the mallard had got too far out of sight and she’d lost interest – because she finally started to head in my direction.

  ‘Good girl,’ I called encouragingly. The current was strong. I could feel it pulling at my legs.

  Although she was now heading for me she was getting swept away to the right, bit by bit. If I wasn’t careful she would be swept right past me, and beyond the point where I was standing the river widened out and looked deep. I quickened my pace, almost fell over, and carried on shouting encouragement. Fortunately the lie of the land was on our side and although Lindy didn’t make it to me she’d fetched up against a jutting-out bit of bank where an old tree overhung the water a couple of hundred feet on my right.

  I splashed over to help her out. She was tired. It was an effort to struggle up the slippery bank and she staggered a bit as she hit dry land and immediately started to shiver. She’s never been over-struck on the cold.

  ‘That serves you right,’ I scolded, as she gave me a wistful little wag and shook a shower of river droplets from her coat. ‘Repeat after me, Mallards can swim faster than dogs.’

  She wagged her tail again and then threw up on the grass, mostly water that she’d swallowed in her haste.

  Adam arrived with the other dogs. ‘Is she OK? I bet it’s freezing in there.’ I could see he was having difficulty keeping a straight face as I squelched around on the grass. In the end he gave up and we both ended up laughing – me slightly hysterically.

  ‘Dad is going to laugh his socks off when I tell him about this,’ he added gleefully.

  He was right. Later, in the comfort of our lounge, with Lindy curled up in her spot on the sofa, paws twitching as she dreamed – probably about mallards – we regaled Tony with the story of our river rescue.

  He laughed uproariously, especially when we hammed it up and said that Lindy was close to drowning, and I was a superhero dog rescuer instead of a reluctant wader-in-up-to-her-knees.

  ‘She hasn’t told you the best bit yet, Dad,’ Adam said, slanting a wicked glance in my direction. ‘She wanted ME to go in and risk hypothermia, not to mention drowning, in order to rescue HER dog. How irresponsible is that?’

  ‘They don’t call us wicked stepmothers for nothing,’ I said, throwing a cushion at him. ‘Anyway it wasn’t deep.’

  ‘Cold though, I bet.’ He threw the cushion back at me harder, and then doubled over with another fit of giggles.

  ‘Seriously though,’ I said. ‘If she’d gone any further she might not have been so lucky. I wouldn’t have fancied her chances if she’d got to the weir. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on her.’

  ‘You’re going to need binoculars then,’ Adam pointed out, which was true. Lindy wasn’t the sort of dog that stayed close by on a walk.

  Tony stroked her head thoughtfully. ‘So you’ve used up another of your nine lives, have you, Lindy Lou. You want to be careful. It’s only cats who have nine lives, you know!’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Another life gone

  ONE OF THE THINGS I noticed about Lindy was that she learned from her experiences. She didn’t stop chasing mallards, but she didn’t attempt to swim after one again – much to my relief.

  That didn’t stop her hunting expeditions though. If there was anything to be found on a walk – no matter if it was dead or alive – she’d find it. Fortunately most of the things she brought back were dead. Or perhaps that should be unfortunately, as she wasn’t at all choosey.

  Once we caught her with a squirrel’s tail. By the state of it the original owner had been dead for some time. In fact, he had probably been forest fodder weeks ago, but no self-respecting forest carnivore had bothered to eat his tail.

  Lindy wasn’t so picky. If it had once lived it could be eaten, was her motto. She charged past me with part of the tail hanging out of her mouth.

  I charged after her, as did Tony, Adam and Fran, a dog-walking friend, who was with us at the time.

  None of us could catch her. Neither did our demands for her to ‘drop it’ get any reaction other than to encourage her to eat it faster. Bit by bit the whole manky, rotting squirrel’s tail, fur and all, disappeared down her throat.

  ‘I can’t believe she ate that,’ Fran remarked.

  ‘It was rank,’ Adam agreed. ‘It must have been like eating a toilet brush.’

  ‘She’s going to be so ill,’ Tony added.

  She was not ill. She wasn’t sick and there were no unpleasant after-effects over the next few days. I don’t know how she did it. She must have had the digestive system of an ox.

  On another memorable occasion we were out for a Sunday afternoon stroll with the dogs and were almost back at our car when we realised Lindy had disappeared.

  ‘She must have found something,’ Adam and I said in un
ison. That was usually why she disappeared.

  We called her, we whistled, we waited. We were just about to retrace our steps when we saw her in the distance running along the path heading our way. Because it was Sunday afternoon there were lots of people around and several of them turned to look at Lindy as she trotted by. One or two pointed and then side-stepped away.

  ‘She’s got something in her mouth,’ I observed, as she came into clearer viewing range. Not that I could see what she had, but it was the way she was running with her head held high to stop her precious cargo from dragging on the ground.

  ‘Oh blimey,’ Tony muttered, ‘It looks big – is it a rabbit?’

  A family with two children squealed in alarm as she trotted proudly past them. We waited in horrified fascination. But it wasn’t until she was almost back with us that we could see what she’d got. She dropped it at our feet with a pleased wag, as if to say, Check that out!

  It was a deer’s head. She’d been carrying it by one ear and its swollen blue tongue lolled from the side of its mouth. It had obviously been shot by poachers – and the head removed from the body – and Lindy had just paraded it past a line of Sunday strollers. No wonder they’d been pointing!

  We couldn’t leave it lying in the car park – lots of families came over this bit of heath land. With a horrified grimace, Tony picked it up and tossed it over the fence into the deep thicket beyond. Lindy was not at all impressed when we then bundled her back into the car and made a swift exit.

  It was a little while after the deer incident that I noticed she had a lump on her hind leg. She’d had lumps and bumps before and the vet had always said they were fatty cysts so I wasn’t unduly worried. But I took her along to the practice anyway to get it checked out.

  ‘It’s probably nothing to worry about,’ our vet confirmed. ‘But I think it’s best if we remove it and send it off for analysis. Just to be on the safe side.’

  She had the operation a week or so later. I went to pick her up and she wagged her tail and came groggily to meet us. She loved going to the vet’s. She loved going anywhere there were people.

  It seemed odd when you considered her background, but perhaps it wasn’t so strange. She’d relied on people on the beach – and she’d obviously figured out that while there were some who couldn’t be trusted, most of them were OK.

  The lump had been sent off to be tested and a few days or so later the vet called us with the results.

  ‘I’m afraid it was a malignant tumour, after all,’ she said. ‘The good news is that we got it all out and it’s a slow-growing one. The bad news is that it might well pop up elsewhere on her body. So you are going to need to keep a close eye on her.’

  It was a shock. We’d joked about Lindy having nine lives before, but I hadn’t really thought about it that seriously. Because she was a cross breed which were usually quite healthy and because of her rough start on the beach I’d just assumed she’d be a tough little dog. I hadn’t even got her insured. But suddenly it struck me how vulnerable she was.

  For the next few months I panicked every time I felt anything on her body remotely resembling a lump and I was always rushing her to the vet. Much to my relief there was never anything wrong with her although going to the vet’s so regularly did get quite expensive.

  ‘We should probably get her insured,’ Tony said. ‘But I suppose they’re going to exclude cancer anyway – as it’s something she’s had before.’

  I agreed with him. ‘Of course, she might get something else wrong with her,’ I said, ‘But it’s unlikely isn’t it? I think we’ll risk it.’

  That was a decision I would later come to regret.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lost in the forest

  IT SEEMED TO BE a time of trouble for our dogs. At the end of November 2004, Katie, who was ten, developed a condition called CDRM, which is a condition that German shepherds sometimes get. Although this is not a painful illness it’s progressive and it slowly paralyses the dog’s back legs. In Katie’s case our vet thought there was something else wrong with her, as the illness progressed very rapidly. By December both her back legs were paralysed and she became very distressed and would cry every time she moved.

  On Christmas Eve I made the very painful decision to have her put to sleep and I said goodbye to my beautiful Katie. She’d been a rescue dog, too, although she hadn’t come from anywhere as exotic as Greece, she’d come from a place in Poole.

  Although we still had Lindy, Jess and Abel, and although Tony and I had always joked that four dogs was one too many, Katie left a massive hole in my life. I was also painfully aware that all our dogs were getting elderly. Jess was 14, Abel, also a rescue, we thought was about 10, and Lindy was about 9. Not that she’d slowed down very much.

  She still only had two speeds: flat out and stationary. And 18 months later when our next dog came along, Maggie, another white German shepherd, nothing much had changed.

  Lindy taught Maggie everything she knew about chasing rabbits, which was quite a lot, and the two of them often hurtled off into the distance. Maggie wasn’t as confident as Lindy and she usually came back pretty quickly but Lindy was very determined once she was on a scent and it wasn’t unusual for her to disappear. However, I’d discovered that just because I couldn’t see her, it didn’t mean she couldn’t see me. Most of the time she knew exactly where I was and she always caught up with me eventually. Consequently, I didn’t worry too much when she ran off.

  I knew she’d catch up in her own time. Once or twice when she’d misjudged where I was I’d found her waiting for me back at the car. The only time I really worried was when she and Maggie chased deer. Caught up in the thrill of the chase they would be oblivious to their surroundings and certainly deaf to my calls. Unfortunately, there were a lot of deer in Wareham forest and so it was an occupational hazard.

  On one particular evening I’d been running with the dogs after work. Lindy liked running because we tended to go deeper into the forest, although I’d discovered that she wasn’t keen on cycling because I’d be moving too fast and she couldn’t calculate where I was going to be when she’d finished rooting about on her hunting expeditions.

  She actually got so fed up of cycling that if she saw me put the bike in the car she’d run back in the house, as if to say, No thanks. You can go by yourself. And if I insisted on taking her she’d lie down on the path and refuse to move. I gave up taking her cycling in the end, although the other dogs loved it.

  Anyway, on this particular evening we’d been running for about 15 minutes when Lindy and Maggie spotted three roe deer crossing the path ahead of us and shot off after them. Abel and Jess didn’t bother to follow: Jess, because she was too old and Abel because he was too lazy.

  I ran up to the point at which the dogs had left the path and whistled for them. We were a long way from the road so there wasn’t much danger of them crossing it and risking injury and I knew the dogs had no chance of catching any deer so I wasn’t too worried.

  After about ten minutes Maggie came back, pink tongue lolling and her legs wobbly because she’d been charging around non-stop for too long. Maggie panicked if she couldn’t find me – Lindy had no such qualms.

  There was no sign of her and no sign of the deer. I did a circuit of the area, calling and whistling. After another 15 minutes I began to get a bit worried – Lindy would usually have come back by now, but there was still no sign of her.

  It was summer and didn’t get dark until nearly 9 p.m. so I still wasn’t too worried, although I did phone Tony on my mobile and tell him what had happened.

  ‘I’ll drive up and help you look,’ he offered. ‘Whereabouts are you?’

  I arranged to meet him in the car park and I headed back to the car in case Lindy had gone back there. But she hadn’t.

  A short while later Tony arrived and we searched for another hour keeping in touch on our mobiles. But Lindy had completely disappeared, swallowed up by the forest. To make matters worse the light wa
s beginning to go.

  I started to torment myself with visions of her lying hurt somewhere.

  ‘What if she’s got caught in a trap?’

  ‘They don’t have traps in Wareham forest,’ Tony muttered.

  ‘But something must have happened to her – or she’d have come back by now. I know she would.’

  ‘Perhaps someone’s found her and picked her up,’ he said, which seemed the most rational explanation. Except that Lindy was wearing a collar and identity tag with my mobile phone number on.

  ‘Wouldn’t they have phoned me?’

  ‘They might not have a phone with them.’

  We carried on the search, but it was getting harder because we couldn’t see anything. I didn’t want to go home. I was still sure Lindy was out there somewhere and I felt that once we left the forest we’d be abandoning her. The thought of leaving her out there for the night was awful.

  ‘We’ll have to go home eventually,’ Tony said, his eyes dark with concern. ‘We can’t stay here all night. And there’s the faintest chance…’ he hesitated.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Well, there’s the faintest chance she might have found her way home and be waiting for us.’

  ‘But she’d have had to cross three main roads.’

  ‘It’s possible. You know what a little survivor she is.’

  It was the possibility of this faint hope that persuaded me to give up the search – temporarily. We agreed that we’d be back first thing in the morning to continue it.

  But Lindy was not waiting outside our house. I unlocked the front door and burst into tears. We might never see her again. The thought broke my heart.