They call me Looki, which is the way that
Spanish people pronounce the English word Lucky, but until I came to live with
Mary and Vic I really cannot say that I had a very lucky life at all.
My earliest memories are very sweet. I had a lovely Westie-mum they used to call
Phyllis, Kerry reminds me of her sometimes.
She was bossy like that and used to lick me behind my ears until the fur
nearly came off, but I was clean. If I
stepped out of line with my brothers and sisters she was very quick to give me
a clip around that very same earhole, but when we all snuggled into her at
night she was the best place to be and somehow she managed to get a paw around
each and every one of us even though we were five pups. She was the best mum in the world.
I don’t remember my dad at all. I don’t think I ever met him, but he must
have been a handsome fellow because all of us were too, or so everybody said at
the time. I don’t think he ever lived
with us but we didn’t miss him, Phyllis was mum and dad all rolled into one and
we loved the bones of her.
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| a handsome boy |
All too soon though that life of sunshine
and breast milk ended and one day a lovely, happy couple came to where we
lived. They picked me up and chucked me
under the chin and said how handsome I was, which I knew already. Papers were signed, for I had a pedigree in
those days, and when they left they took me with them.
For the first couple of weeks I was quite
happy although I did miss my brothers and sisters and Phyllis terribly,
especially at night.
My new home was comfortable enough though
everything was so big it terrified me.
The garden was huge and there was a large expanse of blue water they
called The Pool that looked very deep
so I did not go too near the edge. The
house was enormous and there was a big stumbling block called The Stairs which stopped me exploring
too far until, that is, I got a bit bigger and then I discovered a whole new
world called Upstairs, but I am
getting ahead of myself here.
At this time of my life I lived on the
flat. I didn’t stray too far from the
kitchen, which became my home for the first while. I had a comfy bed there and lots of chewy
toys. The lady who was now my mum gave
me kisses and treats and gently chastised me if I did a wee wee or worse on the
tiled floor or rug, but gave me very tasty treats if I went on the newspaper by
the back door. The man, who did not
smell as nice, used to give me a round slap and stick my nose in my own poo if
he found it first. Then he would shout
at me and the lady and put me roughly on the back doorstep where I would shiver
and whine until he had finished shouting at my mum. Then she would come out to get me and clean
me up. Her wet eyes glistened while she was bathing me and she would whisper
how much she loved me and how much she hated
Him so I would lick the slender hands with the long pointy nails and told
her that I loved her too and promised to be better in the future.
I learned the ropes pretty quickly. Me and mummy, he called her the Prize Bitch, used
to play together and she would sing to me sometimes too. She had another much prettier name, Michelle,
which she used to use when she spoke on the phone with her friends. Most days I would hang out while she fixed a
sandwich in the kitchen and I usually got a bit of cheese or ham, then we would
go out to the pool and she would lie on a lounger while I chased earwigs and
imaginary mice. Sometimes she put me on
the water bed and pushed me out into The Pool.
I did not like that at all, it made me feel all wobbly, but she always
made sure that I would get off it again safely and she never insisted that I
went swimming like she did. I think she
knew that I did not really like water.
When the man came home in the evening the
mood would change and I used to pretty much take to my bed as it seemed the
safer option. My bed was just inside the
kitchen door and as neither he nor she did much cooking I was pretty safe, as
they used to sit in the other room watching telly and drinking. So I would doze and dream of Phyllis and my
siblings. As the evening wore on they
would get louder and louder and eventually there were the usual angry raised
voices, perhaps the sound of breaking glass, a slammed door and tears of
course. He would usually storm off to
bed first and she would be left crying and clearing up the mess. I might poke my nose out then and she would
be looking disheveled and sad. The tears
streamed down her face taking the lovely black mascara with it. She would continue picking up the pieces,
ignoring me except to let me out for a run before bedtime, which is just as
well because I was usually bursting by that time. Then she would follow her man up to bed.
I grew bigger and bolder all the same and
slowly my lovely pretty mummy got smaller and smaller. Her bones stuck out everywhere and her
mascara was always smudged now. Sometimes
she even had great big bruises on her pretty face. She told her friends, in whispered tones, on
the phone that she had walked into the door again, but I never saw her bumping
into anything. She didn’t cuddle me as
much and sometimes forgot to feed me, but I still loved her and when she cried
I was always there to comfort her. The
man called her something even worse now that sounded like “Stoopid Can’t” It didn’t
sound very nice and was always shouted in an angry voice.
One day it all got too bad though. It was my fault. I thought I was a big man (I was probably all
of six months old) and decided it was time to climb The Stairs. Up I went, slowly and carefully and when I
reached the top I discovered a new paradise of rooms with beds with lovely
fluffy quilts on them. The grandest room
with the largest bed had a the most beautiful navy blue throw I have ever seen
and it looked so inviting that I could not resist it and jumped up to take a
look. It smelled of mummy and had little
white roses embroidered on each corner.
I thought the colour suited me rather well so I decided to close my eyes
for a few moments and think of Phyllis.
But of course I fell asleep.
I was awoken abruptly by a heavy boot in
the side of my body and I flew like a ragdoll to the other side of the
room. “You little bastard!” the man
yelled at me. “The bed is ruined!” With that he tore the quilt off the bed and
pushed it hard under my quivering nose so that I could see the tiny white hairs,
mine, that were stuck on the navy fabric.
Then he threw the quilt over me and I felt myself being lifted
bodily. I could hardly breath, but
through the noise of the man roaring and the panic in my body and brain I could
hear Stoopid Can’t shrieking and crying and saying “No, No No!” I had no idea what was happening and have no
memory of anything else until I woke up, somewhere, still half smothered in the
throw. I whimpered and called for my mum
and then Phyllis, but nobody came.
How long I tussled with the fabric I do not
know, but thankfully I finally saw a pinhole of light and wriggled my way
toward it. I crept out blinking in the
harsh midday sun. All around me was
grass and weeds and I hadn’t a clue where I was or where my mummy was. So I sat and whined.
I don’t think I was there very long, which
is just as well because I was getting hungry by this time, before a nice
looking woman came towards me. She
picked me up and took me to her waiting car.
And thus began a long string of ‘owners’ in my lifetime.
I became like the proverbial hot potato,
passed from family to family. In the
first home I wet the floor and got smacked.
Then I was passed to the next home where I bit the little girl. Well she strangled me…and not just once
either. In the next home I tried to
mount the lovely girl poodle that already lived there. She was asking for it I might say, but her
mummy took exception to my behaviour and that was that.
On and on this went until one day my then current
owner took me for a drive in her car, she let me out for a run and while I was
sniffing about in the grass she drove away again. I looked up from my work and once more I
found myself all alone, this time with nothing but great big airplanes flying
overhead. I was probably around two
years old and all I really craved was love, which was the one thing that seemed
to evade me, and food, of course, I was always hungry. Hunger was my immediate problem now and in
the distance I saw a building so I walked across the wasteland towards it. I was pretty certain that I would find food
there.
It was a busy place, with people going in
and out with big cases and bags. It
turned out to be quite a good place for food too. As they rushed in and out the people often
threw a half eaten sandwich at one of the bins, of which there were plenty. If I was lucky, they would miss and then I
could easily pick up the sandwich and take it to my secret corner where I would
settle down and eat it. Unfortunately if
the sandwich went into the bin all I could do was think about it longingly as
my legs were too short to get it out again.
But I tried. There were a couple
of other dogs with longer legs and who could jump and they sometimes managed to
spill the bins and I would often rush in and try to snatch something from under
their noses. Sometimes I succeeded and
other times I got bitten, but I learned to bite back too. It was, as they say, dog eat dog living at
the airport.
I am not sure how long I managed to live
this way, but I was not happy. I was
getting thinner and thinner and my fur was getting long and matted and I could hardly
see through my fringe. I am a dog that
needs quite a bit of grooming. But luckily,
over time I made friends with one of the airport guards. He began to bring me little titbits of food
and sometimes rubbed my ears, which I adored.
One day he brought a collar and lead and put it around my neck and led
me to his car at the end of his shift.
He brought me to a house in the
country. It belonged to an old grisly
man with huge hands. He grunted and took
me and tied me up on a long chain outside the back of his house and there I
stayed winter and summer except for the odd occasion when he would get out his
shears and chop off my matted fur, give me a very rough bath in cold water,
bundle me in the car and take me to a place where I would be introduced to some
lovely little Westie bitch. Not the same
one every time, but I did get to know one quite well. Her name was Juanita and she was very welcoming. She had very pretty eyes and long dangly
teats from having lots of babies, but it did not put me off and I always did
the business. After a couple of days
larking about with my sweet Baby Jane, as I liked to call her, I was whisked
away again and back to the farmyard with the long chain.
I lived there some years. I lose count now, until one day the old man
fell while going about his farm chores in the yard. I went over to investigate, luckily my chain
was just long enough. He seemed to be asleep,
so I just sat quietly beside him to look after him. It was getting dark when a man who looked a lot
like my owner drove into the yard and when he saw the old man he starting shouting
and took his phone out of his pocket and rang someone. It was all action. Another car drove up, with a younger man
named Juan, who turned out to be the second man’s nephew. Then a very loud van with flashing lights
drove very quickly into the yard. Two
burly men in blue clothes got out and put the old man onto a stretcher and they
took him away. I never saw him again.
Juan and his uncle spent a bit of time at
the house. They fed the hens and they
went into the house, where I hard them banging around for a bit. At least they threw a bit of bread out into
the yard for me, which I guzzled down in seconds. I was very hungry by that time. I could have done with a drop of water too,
but neither of them thought to fill my water bowl. Finally they came out of the house and talked
a bit to each other. Juan then unhooked
me from the chain and tying a piece of string around my neck he led me to his
car. I was off to a new home yet again.
Juan lived with his father in the
town. He took me into a long thin, very
dark, house. Right through it we
walked. I would have liked to have
stayed in the kitchen where he sat most days with his father. They never did much, just watched TV and ate
bread and chorizo sausage, but I was grateful for small mercies in those days
and that lifestyle would have suited me fine.
Instead, as I say, he took me through the house and out to a very small
yard with high walls all around. The yard
was full of bits of metal, broken lamps and flowerpots. And that was my new home.
It wasn’t the best of homes. Juan was not cruel to me, but he never so
much as ruffled my ears and that’s all I ever really wanted. He usually fed me, though sometimes he didn’t
get round to it. He hardly ever filled
my water bowl, which was pretty stagnant for the most part, and I got used to
living in my own excrement because he was not very good at cleaning up after me
either. But I did not like it as I am
basically a clean dog. He put a kennel
in the yard for me so at least I had some shelter when it was excruciatingly
hot in the summer or when it was miserably cold and wet in the winter. Every few months he took me out and I got to
service another pretty bitch. It wasn’t
Juanita though and I missed her, almost as much as I missed Phyllis.
And so I lived for over two years, though
sometimes in the summer months they took me back to the farm where I used to
live and there they tied me up to the long chain again. At least I could watch the chickens, but the
old lady who lived there now was very cranky and often gave me a clip around
the ears if she felt like it, which was pretty much every day. So I bit her.
Not hard, but just enough to tell her to lay off. She didn’t and very soon I was back at Juan’s,
this time with no escape clause.
Over the years I had noticed the people
next door. They used to say hello to me
from time to time. They also did a lot
of work on their house and there were often builders in who sometimes gave me
the end of a sandwich or even bones, which was nice. But it was very noisy and very dusty. Still I used to look for the people as they
looked pleasant and smelled friendly. In
any event anything new to look at was interesting, I didn’t usually get a whole
lot of excitement in the yard.
One day they even invited me in. They were having a barbeque and I was allowed
to run around their lovely garden. I
tried to get up onto the man’s lap, but I was so smelly that he pushed me down
again. I don’t blame him, I didn’t like
the way I smelled either. Even the lady
only gingerly patted the top of my head, but it was all that I wanted, a bit of
affection. That day ended too soon and I
was put back in the yard though the lady and the man looked sad when I left
them. I think they wanted me to stay,
but I belonged to Juan. I held onto the
memory of that day for as long as I could, but it started to fade like all the
rest.
Time passed, it was November again and it
was getting cold. The building next door
had grown and now obscured more of the light from the yard and also had taken
the back of the house too far away for the people to pop their heads over the
wall or their hands through the fence anymore.
So I was starting to feel even more isolated and lonely. The yard, which was always cluttered, was now
even more filled with broken furniture and ladders and things I did not know
the name of. I couldn’t see much, only the occasional cat which was brave
enough to walk across the wall. I barked
at them, but my heart wasn’t in it and it was not as exciting as it used to
be. Sometimes great big rockets were
fired off in the town. I hated them. They terrified me, but there was absolutely
no point in complaining as nobody came to hug me and say that I would be safe. All I could do was cower in my kennel.
I could tell that Juan was getting fed up
with me being there as he hated cleaning up my poo, even though he did not do
it very often. I found out later that
the lady next door (who is of course now my mum) used to ask him to do it when
it had been collecting in the yard for too long. By this time I could hardly move and there
was nothing to do, so I just started to sit staring into space. I think I was going slightly bonkers if the
truth be told because during the day I began talking to the walls and at night
I would howl ever so quietly at the moon, even if there was none. It all felt so hopeless and I was so sad and
lonely.
Then suddenly one day it just
happened. Juan came to get me from the
yard. He put on my harness and
lead. I thought I was probably going out
to see some nice bitch, though I really needed a bath. He led me through the house and out to his
car. The lady and man from next door
were waiting for us there, which was strange, but nice, and the lady took my
lead. We all got into the car and like a
good boy I settled in the footwell at the lady’s feet and we all drove to the
Vet’s.
I got a check over and all the people and
the Vet did lots of talking and writing and some money was passed across the
desk, though I was more interested in the Poodles, the Yorkies and the
Bodegueros in the waiting room. Then we
all got back into Juan’s car and drove back to the square. We got out of the car and joy of joys, this
time I went with my new mum and dad, Mary and Vic, into their house and the
rest, as they say, is history.
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| I was pretty scared at first |
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| but soon learned to relax a bit |
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| and now, well I feel right at home |
I have been here now two years. It took me a while to settle in and it was
not without accidents, illness and tears, but you have read all about those
things in Mary’s other blog posts. The
one thing that is different here, well, there are many things different really,
but the one thing that gives me hope and has made me the very happy boy I am
today is the thing that Mary whispers in my ear every night. “You are my Best Boy Looki”, she says to me
and then she takes my head in her hands and looks me straight in the eyes and
says “As long as there is breath in my body you will have a home here.” And this time I believe that it will be
so.
I love you mum
And I love you too dad. I can’t wait for you to come home……
Looki xxx
PS I love my sisters too, though they
sometimes sit on mum’s knee before I can.
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| I love my sisters xx |
