The First Westie

Photo credit:  Anisa Shaikh

Looki was the first Westie to come into our lives.  I didn't even know what a West Highland White Terrier was then.  I thought he was a Scottie dog.  What I did know though was that he was the dog next door.  A scrapeen of curly, white fur and a long pink, tongue.  He had bright, eager eyes and hardly ever made a sound….except for that last November.

I had not seen him for a couple of months.  I think he must have gone to live in the country for the summer.  That must have been a big relief to him.  It was for me too, because I did not have to think about him on the other side of the wall in a yard about three metres by four, filled with angle iron, welding equipment, bits of motorbikes, flowerpots, saucepans, lamps, plastic tubing, broken furniture, flapping green tarpaulin and his own excrement.

He never went out of the yard and no one ever visited him, except presumably to feed and water him and to throw another bit of rubbish somewhere in his vicinity.  His former owner, let's call him José, was pretty lax about cleaning up the doggie doo and on a couple of occasions, when it reached the week mark, I had to ask him to do it.  I said that it was because we were having a barbecue and the smell and flies were terrible, but really it was because I felt desperately sorry for the poor little dog.  It made little difference to the smell or the flies anyway as all he did was tip it over the end wall of his patio and into the common land on the other side, just below our terrace!  Nice neighbours!

The only company Looki had in the two years that he was living in that yard was the bucketful of wild terrapins that José brought home one day. They spent a few scorching weeks wandering around the patio with Looki, with not even a basin of water for them to cool off in.  I saw him chasing them sometimes. One day Steve (McQueen), the largest and strongest of the terrapins, made his great escape and hopped over the wall and onto our terrace, which owing to building works was starting to become a living room, but had no walls yet.  We did the 'honourable' thing then and gave him back to his 'owner'.  But then I started to feel very guilty about doing it.  No bother to Steve, watching for his opportunity he made his second Great Escape, this time over the wall at the end of the patio.  He landed in a pile of poo and then managed to find hiding, emerging again in the evening, when we saw him patrolling the perimeter fencing at the bottom of the common land, charging up and down it faster than any terrapin should with his head bobbing on his fully extended wrinkly neck, looking for the point of least resistance and another escape.  So I sent Vic over the wall with a ladder to fetch him back. 

We put Steve into a box and I popped down to the local Vet's where they told me that I really had to return it to the 'owner' and only if it escaped again after his owner being warned could I keep it and release it to a sanctuary.

I went home and thought about it for a day or two, while Steve, visibly depressed and refusing water and food, clattered about in a makeshift pen.  Eventually I enlisted the help of a friend, coincidentally called Steve, to drive me down to a little stream that he knew of where he often saw lots of terrapins and I returned the hapless creature to the wild.  I often thought that even if he was eaten by a stork on his very first day of freedom, at least he was free again.  But I'm pretty certain he is alive and thriving.

So that was the previous year and Looki was absent the following summer, by which time we had our living room and bedroom completed and our terrace had moved out by about four metres or so, so we could no longer see into José's yard.  Sometimes Vic peered around the corner of our new building and at the end of October/beginning of November he saw a shadow of the dog we had once known.  Obviously getting worn down by the life he had, he was lacking the character or colour that he used to possess and would sit just staring into space.  At night, when Vic and I lay in bed, we used to hear Looki crying.  He wasn’t barking, there was no point, no one ever came, and he wasn’t howling.  He used to cry, quite softly, but persistently.

That was when we both decided it was time to do something.

Why had we not acted sooner?  I ask myself this question over and over again, but the fact is, we did not have a suitable environment for a pet, nor did we have the stability in our own lives to take on the responsibility of another living creature.  I still wish that I had done something sooner, but everything has its own time.

We dawdled for a day or two still, uneasy about the confrontation that we knew we were about to have with our next-door neighbour.  We tried to work out a scenario that would not put blame on him, fearing that he may get stubborn.   Pride was a big factor here.  A friend of ours even suggested that we offered to buy the dog!  The thought of which galled me, but the sense of it struck me too.  You see!  My own pride was coming into play here also.

In the end, it was a very hot Sunday afternoon and we had spent a couple of hours getting jarred up to give us a bit of Dutch courage when there was a knock at the door.  Vic went first and I was not far behind.  It was our neighbour.

"I can't understand what he is saying?"  Said Vic.

So I asked him to repeat what he had said, but slowly, for me.

"Would you like my dog…..as a present?"  Said José

I simply said…."yes…."