Well lets see – my old dog Woody died in April 2009, he was a rescue dog from Sussex and had been with us for 14 years. I knew he was going to be a hard act to follow so decided to bide my time and carefully choose a new family member.
I lasted all of a month before I started looking, I missed having a dog around the house and there was a big gap underneath the stairs where Woody’s bed used to be. In a way it was a tribute to the old fella that I was searching again so soon as I missed his presence in my life.
So, determined to have another rescue dog, I started looking through websites. I was thinking of a smaller dog this time as Woody was a GSD/Collie X, so I visited Dogs Trust in Bridgend and our local pound but, though there were a few I liked, there wasn’t one with that particular ‘something’ that meant they were to be mine.
Then one day, going via a site I’d just found called ‘Dog Pages’, I followed the links to Rescues in Wales and found Four Paws Animal Rescue. I started looking through their foster dogs looking for homes, which I thought was a good idea, as, after being to the pound and DT, it seemed that you were taking a chance on a dog from them as they couldn’t really know what a dog was like in the home environment and I now had grandchildren to take into account.
I didn’t really see ‘the one’ in their ‘foster dogs looking for homes’ and was just about to leave the site when I saw the heading ‘Poundies looking for a foster home or a rescue place’ and went for a browse to see what that was - and there he was, Jack, a Poundie.He was another larger dog, a black Labrador, completely against my original aims of going for a smaller dog, but as soon as I saw him I knew he was ‘the one’ for me.
I hadn’t even filled in the application form but I was already planning his name change to Mac, since my grandson was called Jack. lol
So looking at this application form and having to fill it in I was worriedly thinking .. black lab, gosh he’ll have loads of applications in, how can I make mine stand out .. he’s my dog! he’s got to be my dog ..
And so I told them the truth .. told them all about my 1st Labrador Tymon, how he’d lived for 11 years as a much loved family pet, but that he’d been blind from 18 months having developed cataracts and glaucoma, about Woody, again a much loved family member having died recently after a number of strokes and had been deaf for quite a while .. so after a number of years looking after a blind dog and then having a deaf dog this time I’d like a ‘normal’ dog to join my family.
Don’t know what swayed them, didn’t care really, but was so pleased to get the invitation to meet up with his fosterer’s up at Caerphilly Garden Centre and be taken to visit him. Mum and my son Mark came along as well and when we got to the house we sat down and waited for him to be brought in.
Somehow, I only got a brief stroke of Mac as the fosterer’s older lab decided he liked me and sat next to me while ‘Jack’ spent time being stroked by my son before deciding he really liked my mum and tried to get up next to her. Now mum’s only 4’10” and there was this big lab trying to get friendly with her ... she didn’t know quite what to do .. especially since Mark and I were chuckling at her being swamped by ‘Jack’
And so Mac came into our lives and is a much loved member of the family .. when I started helping with the fundraising side of Four Paws a couple of months later I would often say “ Four Paws took sympathy on me, I’d had a blind dog, then I’d had a deaf dog, and this time I wanted a ‘normal’ dog. yet somehow I ended up with ‘big’ Mac. Yet I cannot imagine my life without him in it now and to finish off the family group we now have Macey, another Four Paws rescue who rules Mac with a rod of iron despite being only 6 months old - and a cat!
(Julieann)
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