Dogs

Dogs have always played an important part of my life. As a child we had 3 dogs from when i was a teenager. They were long haired Chihuahuas called Pepsi, Max and Little Man! Pepsi Died in 2007, he was 18. Max and Little Man are still going strong but they are getting on a bit and they live with my mum and dad.

In 2004 we decided that it was time to get a dog. I had always wanted to get a Springer spaniel because I used to walk one that lived next door to my aunts house and he was so full of energy and life. Also in my work, I used to meet the search dogs and handlers quite a lot - this just made my desire to own a springer stronger.

We answered an ad with puppies for sale in the Friday Ad free newspaper. The puppies were home reared and were down near Gatwick airport. We made an appointment to go and see the pups.

When we got there, there were only 4 puppies, apparently the mother only had 4 puppies which is a very low number for a springer.

We didn’t so much choose a puppy as a puppy chose us, she was the smallest of the litter and was the only one bold enough to come and see us.

This is the little puppy that chose us, we named her Daisy. We left a deposit and said we would collect her next weekend.

The following week was planned like a military operation, there were all kinds of things we had to take in to consideration. We had to get fence in the back garden fixed, we put in a dog flap, we puppy proofed the garden.

There was also a lot of stuff to buy, like beds, food bowls, toys etc.

We were not too sure what food to buy her, so we bought a selection of dry and tinned and stocked up.

When the day came, we drove down and picked her up, she was great all of the way home. We took the country lanes home as we did not want to frighten her on the motorway.

She was great when we got home, she bonded with us right away, there was a little bit of crying at night, but nothing a cuddle on the bed didn’t sort out!

Daisy grew in to a wonderful friendly and outgoing dog, becoming a dog owner rapidly became very important to us. We became involved with several springer web sites and started making lots of new friends both in our local park and on line, these are people that share the same passion of dogs as us.

We had always planned to keep one of the puppies, we had pretty much decided that we would like another dog like Daisy so we wanted a liver and white female. Luckily we were presented with puppy number 2 which was a small liver and white female. We decided that we were going to keep her and named her Poppy.

As the puppies got older, one puppy stood out amongst the rest. it was a little black and white boy we had named Toby. Toby was a bold and adventurous little chap that was always getting up to mischief. We often discussed if we should keep 2 pups and if we did we would keep Toby.

When it came to the new owners choosing the puppies, no one chose Toby. It got down o the last person coming to choose a puppy and little Toby had been playing hard before they came, so he was sleepy and tired when they came round. The other dog Jerry came alive and bonded with the new owner, so she chose Jerry. That made our minds up for us - we were keeping Toby!