The Dog Listener: Learn How to Communicate with Your Dog for Willing Cooperation

The Dog Listener

Learn How to Communicate

with Your Dog for

Willing Cooperation

Jan Fennell

Caution

It is important to say here that my method cannot remove the aggressive tendencies of any dog. Certain breeds have been raised specifically for the purpose of fighting, and my methods will never be able to alter their potentially savage nature. What my method can do is allow people to manage their dogs so that this aggressive instinct is never called upon. Please exercise the greatest of caution when working with such dogs.

For my son Tony

Contents

Caution

Photographs

Foreword by Monty Roberts

The Dog Listener

Introduction

1 The Lost Language

2 A Life with Dogs

3 Listening and Learning

4 Taking the Lead

5 The First Test

6 Amichien Bonding: Establishing Leadership of the Pack

7 Separate Lives: Dealing with Separation Anxiety

8 Mean and Moody: Dealing with Nervous Aggression

9 Peacemaking: Dogs That Bite

10 The Bodyguards: Overprotective Dogs

11 The Up-and-Down Game: Dogs That Jump Up

12 Non-Total Recall: Dogs That Run Wild off the Lead

13 Dog v. Dog: Taking the Heat Out of Canine Confrontations

14 Tales of the Unexpected: Fear of Noises

15 New Dogs, Old Tricks: Introducing Puppies to the Home

16 Gremlins: Dealing with Problem Puppies

17 The House on Pooh Corner: Soiling in the Home

18 Situations Vacant: The Problems of Extended Packs

19 Biting the Hand That Feeds: Problem Eaters

20 Have Dog, Won’t Travel: Dealing with Car Chaos

21 Feet-Chewers and Tail-Chasers: Nervous Wrecks and How to Salvage Them

22 The Yo-Yo Effect: Overcoming the Problems of Rescue Dogs

23 Toys Not Trophies: The Power of Play

24 How’ve Ya Done That, Lady?

The 30-Day Training Guide

Introduction

Part One: Day 1: A Reintroduction to Dog Listening

Part Two: The First 48 Hours: New Horizons: Settling a New Dog in Its Environment

Part Three: Days 3–7: Why There’s No Place Like Home

Part Four: Days 8–14: Home and Away

Part Five: Days 15–21: Off the Leash

Part Six: Days 22–30: The Counter-Revolutionaries: Leadership Challenges

Part Seven: Days 31 Onward…: Keep an Open Mind

Acknowledgments

Searchable terms

About the Author

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

Dogs have played an important part in my life. My wife, Pat, and our family have had several over the years that were loving companions and important members of our family. It has been another wonderful creature that has dominated my career, however. I have spent my life developing—and often defending—the method I have discovered for communicating with the horse.

The appetite the dog world has for my ideas has been obvious throughout this time. Wherever I may be in the world, there are invariably four times as many dog owners and trainers as there are horse trainers at my demonstrations. Almost to a person, they have strong, positive comments to make about my method.

Given my time all over again, I would relish the challenge of adapting my ideas and taking them into the canine world. As it is, though, I have more than enough to keep me occupied, developing and sharing my own discipline. Fortunately, in the last few years, I have become aware of a talented dog trainer who, inspired by my method, has undertaken the task already.

It was with a warm heart that I first learned of the work Jan Fennell has been doing in England. I have been lucky enough to meet her there and she has related much that reminds me of my own earlier experiences. Like me, Jan feels a deep sense of injustice at the way man has sometimes maltreated an animal he claims to call his friend. She also passionately believes that violence has no place in our relationship with animals. Her dream, too, is a world in which all species live in peace.

As with me, Jan has been slow to summon the courage to tell her story. I dragged my feet for years before I wrote my first book, The Man Who Listens to Horses. Jan has been just as careful in waiting to put her ideas into print. She now feels confident in her experience and is ready to share her remarkable work with a wider audience.

As she does so, I wish her and her ideas well. I am sure there will be those who will assail her. If my experience has taught me anything, it is that human nature has an almost limitless capacity for negativity. Each of us should be aware that for every grain of negative within the human community, there is a mountain of positive waiting for us among animals. We should also note that for every negative, however, there are literally hundreds thirsting for a better way to deal with man’s best friends.

I am proud to think that by sticking to my beliefs I have helped make the world a better place for the horse and, hopefully, for people too. I hope this book can achieve the same for another very special creature, the dog.

MONTY ROBERTS, California, March 2000

The Dog Listener

Introduction

I am a great believer in learning from the mistakes we make in life. I should be. I have made more than enough of my own, in my relations with humans as well as dogs. Of all the lessons the latter have taught me, none was as painful as that I received in the winter of 1972. It seems to me fitting that I should begin with the tragedy of Purdey. For reasons that will soon become apparent, her story is inseparable from my own.

At the time, I was married and was raising my two young children, my daughter, Ellie, born that February, and Tony, then two-and-a-half. We were living as a family in London but had just decided to move to the countryside, and a small village in Lincolnshire, in the heart of England. Like so many people drawn to the rural life, we were all looking forward to going on long country walks and decided we would like a canine companion to take with us. Rather than buying a new puppy, we thought we’d rescue a dog. We liked the idea of giving a home to an animal that had had a raw deal, so off we trundled to the RSPCA and saw this rather sweet, six-month-old, black and white, cross Border collie-whippet. We took her home, where we decided to call her Purdey.

She was not the first dog in my life. That had been Shane, a magnificent, tricolored Border collie I had been given by my father when I was a thirteen-year-old girl growing up in Fulham, west London. I had always loved dogs and, as a little girl, had invented an imaginary one called Lady. I remember my grandmother indulging me by talking to my fictional friend with me. I think I saw dogs then, as I do now, as objects of unquestioning love and total loyalty—qualities that are hard to find in humans. Shane’s arrival in our family had only confirmed my feelings.

I trained Shane with my father, according to the technique Dad had used himself in raising his dogs as a young boy. Dad was a gentle man, but he was also determined the dog was going to do what we said. If Shane did something wrong, he got a tap on the nose or a smack on his bottom. But I got a smack on the bottom too and I thought it was OK, particularly as Shane was an extremely smart creature and seemed to understand what we wanted. I can still remember the pride I used to feel at taking him onto Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common on the Number 74 bus. Shane would sit by my side without a lead, behaving impeccably all the time. He was a super dog.

If something works, you go along with it. You don’t mend what isn’t broken, as they say. So when we got Purdey, I decided to apply the same method as I had with Shane, teaching her the difference between right and wrong with a mixture of love, affection, and, where necessary, force.

At first this method seemed to work for Purdey too. She behaved well and fitted easily into the family in London. The problems started when we eventually moved to Lincolnshire that September. Our new home could not have presented a greater contrast to noisy, over-populated London. We lived in a small, isolated village. There were no street lights, the buses only ran twice a week, and it was a four-mile hike to the nearest shop. I remember when I was a toddler I had been taken to the seaside for the first time. I took one look at the sea and ran back up the hill away from it. My expression as a three-year-old was too big enough and, if she could have spoken, I’m sure that’s what Purdey would have said about her new home. It seemed like everything was too big enough.

Soon after we arrived, Purdey began to behave in a way that I thought then was odd and not a little bit worrying. She would run off into the countryside, disappear for hours, then come back obviously having had a great time somewhere. She was also hyperactive and seemed to be wound up by the slightest thing or sound. She followed me absolutely everywhere I went, which was a nuisance when I had the two small children. I wasn’t happy about her roaming the countryside like this. We all have a responsibility to make sure our dogs don’t cause danger or become a nuisance to others. But I decided that I had taken this dog on and I was going to stick with her. I owed it to her to help her settle, and that’s what I hoped to do. Events, however, soon overtook me.

The first inkling I got that something was wrong was when a local farmer came to see me. He told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not keep this dog under control he was going to shoot her. I was devastated, of course, but I also saw his point because he had livestock and Purdey was obviously running around and worrying the animals. So we put her in the huge, 200-foot garden we had, slipped a rope on her collar, and attached it to the washing line so she could go no farther. But she still ran off whenever she could.

Matters took a turn for the worse one cold winter’s morning just before Christmas. I had come downstairs with the children and was going through our usual start-of-the-day routine. Purdey was frantically charging around as she always did first thing in the morning. I remember Ellie was crawling around on the floor, while Tony was playing the little helper, sorting out a pile of clothes I had in the sitting room. I went into the kitchen, which led directly off the sitting room, to collect their drinks, when I heard a loud crash. I will never forget what I saw when I looked around. The dog had jumped up at Tony and jettisoned him through one of the panes of a sliding glass door. There was broken glass everywhere. From then on, it was as if everything was happening in slow motion. I remember Tony looking at me with this stunned, sort of frozen expression as the blood poured from his little face. I remember rushing to Tony, scooping him up, and grabbing a clean terry-toweling nappy from a pile of clothes. My days as a St. John’s Ambulance volunteer had taught me to check for shards of broken glass. When I was happy that there were none, I began pressing the nappy onto his face, applying the pressure as hard as I could to stem the flow of blood. I then cradled him in my arms and headed for Ellie, who was miraculously sitting still in the middle of this sea of broken glass. I scooped her up under my spare arm and sat there on my knees calling for help. All the while Purdey was running around like a lunatic, barking and jumping in the air as if she was playing some huge game.

It was every parent’s nightmare. When help eventually arrived, friends and family were unanimous. Tony’s injuries were awful and would leave him scarred for life. This dog is a bad one, she’s a rogue, they said. I still felt responsible for Purdey, however, and was determined to give the dog another chance. She continued getting herself into problems every now and again, but, for a couple of months at least, all was relatively calm.

Then one sunny winter’s morning, just before Ellie’s first birthday in February, I was in another part of the house while Ellie was on the floor playing with her toys, supervised by my mother. The moment I heard my mother scream, I realized something had happened. When I got to the sitting room, my mother just shouted, The dog’s bitten her. Ellie did nothing and the dog’s bitten her. The dog’s turned. I didn’t want to believe it. But when I saw Ellie had a rather nasty little nick over her right eye, I had no option. My head was spinning. Why had this happened? What had Ellie done? Where had my training gone wrong? I knew, however, that the time for questions was over.

As soon as he heard the news, my father came around to see me. As a girl, I had heard him talk of one of his favorite dogs, an Old English sheepdog cross called Gyp, and how he had turned. My grandmother had been trying to move him off a sofa and he had snapped at her. In my grandfather’s mind if a dog could turn on the hand that fed it, then it was doomed. So Gyp was destroyed. My father did not have to spell it out for me. You know what you’ve got to do, my girl, once they’ve gone, they’ve gone, he said sadly. Don’t waste your time, just do it. That evening the children’s father came back from work. Where’s the dog? he asked me. She’s dead, I told him. I had taken her to the vet that afternoon and had her put down.

For a long time, part of me believed I had done the right thing with Purdey. Yet at the same time I always felt that I failed her, that it was my fault not hers. Even when I had her put down, I felt I was deserting her. It took me almost twenty years to confirm my suspicions. What I now know is that Purdey’s behavior was all caused by my inability to understand that dog, to communicate with her, to show her what I actually wanted. In the most simple terms: she was a dog, a member of the canine not the human family, yet I was using a human language.

Over the past ten years, I have learned to listen to and understand canine language. As that understanding has grown, I have been able to communicate with dogs, to help them—and their owners—overcome their problems. On many occasions, my intervention has prevented a dog from being destroyed because of its seemingly untreatable behavior. The joy I have felt each time I have saved a dog’s life in this way has been immense. I would be lying if I did not admit that it is also tinged with regret that I did not learn these principles in time to save Purdey.

The object of this book is to pass on the knowledge I have acquired. I will explain how I arrived at the method I now operate. I will then go on to outline how you can learn this language for yourself. Like all languages, it has to be treated seriously. Learn it lazily or half-heartedly and it will only confuse both you and the dog with which you are trying to communicate. Learn it well and I can assure you that your animal will reward you with cooperation, loyalty, and love.

1

The Lost Language

THE DOG IS A LION IN HIS OWN HOUSE.

Persian Proverb

Mankind has misplaced many secrets in the course of its history. The true nature of our relationship with the dog is among them. Like many millions of people around the world, I have always felt a special affinity exists between our two species. It goes beyond mere admiration for the dog’s athleticism, intelligence, and looks. There is an intangible bond there, something special that connects us and probably has done since our earliest beginnings.

For most of my life, this feeling was founded on little more than instinct, an act of faith, if you like. Today, however, the subject of man’s relationship with the dog is the subject of a burgeoning body of intriguing scientific evidence. That evidence indicates that the dog is not only man’s best friend but also his oldest.

According to the most up-to-date research I have read, the two species’ stories became intertwined as long ago as 100,000 years BC. It was then that the modern human, Homo sapiens, emerged from his Neanderthal ancestor in Africa and the Middle East. It was also around this time that the dog, Canis familiaris, began to evolve from its ancestor, the wolf, Canis lupus. There seems little doubt that the two events were connected and that the link lies in man’s earliest attempts at domestication. Of course, our ancestors have incorporated other animals into their communities, most notably the cow, the sheep, the pig, and the goat. The dog, however, was not just the first but by far the most successful addition to our extended family.

There is compelling evidence to suggest our forefathers valued their dogs above almost everything else in their life. One of the most moving things I have seen in recent years was a documentary on the discoveries made at the ancient Natufian site of Ein Mallah in northern Israel. There, in this parched and lifeless landscape, the 12,000-year-old bones of a young dog were found resting beneath the left hand of a human skeleton of the same age. The two had been buried together. The clear impression is that the man had wanted his dog to share his last resting place with him. Similar discoveries, dating back to 8500 BC, have been made in America, at the Koster site in Illinois.

The sense that man and dog had a unique closeness is only underlined by the work done by sociologists in communities in Peru and Paraguay. There, even today, when a puppy becomes orphaned, it is common for a woman to take over the rearing process. The dog feeds off the woman until it is ready to stand on its own feet. No one can be sure how far back this tradition goes. We can only begin to guess at the intensity of the relationship these people’s ancestors must have had with their dogs.

There are, I’m sure, many more discoveries to be made, many more eye-opening insights to be gained. Yet even with the knowledge we now have, we should not be surprised that the empathy between the two species was so powerful. Quite the opposite in fact; the immense similarities between the two animals made them natural partners.

The wealth of study that has been done in this area tells us that both the ancient wolf and the Stone-Age man shared the same driving instincts and the same social organization. In simple terms, both were predators and lived in groups or packs with a clear structure. One of the strongest similarities the two shared was their inherent selfishness. A dog’s response to any situation—like man’s—is what’s in it for me? In this instance, it is easy to see that the relationship they developed was of immense mutual benefit to both species.

As the less suspicious, more trusting wolf settled into its new environment alongside man, it found it had access to more sophisticated hunting techniques and tools such as snares and stone arrows, for instance. At night it could find warmth at the side of man’s fire and food in the form of discarded scraps. It was little wonder it took so easily to the domestication that was about to begin. By introducing the wolf to his domestic life, man reaped the benefits of a superior set of instincts. Earlier in his history, the Neanderthal man’s exaggerated proboscis had provided him with a powerful sense of smell; his descendant saw that by integrating the newly domesticated wolf into the hunt, he could once more tap into this lost sense. The dog became a vital cog in the hunting machine, helping to flush out, isolate, and, if necessary, kill the prey. In addition to all this, of course, man enjoyed the companionship and protection the dog provided within the camp.

The two species understood each other instinctively and completely. In their separate packs, both man and wolf knew their survival depended on the survival of their community. Everyone within that community had a role to perform and got on with it. It was only natural that the same rules should be applied in the extended pack. So while humans concentrated on jobs like fuel gathering, berry picking, house repairs, and cooking, the dogs’ main role was to go out with the hunters as their eyes and ears. They would perform a similar role back within the camp, acting as the first line of defense, warding off attackers and warning the humans of their approach. The degree of understanding between man and dog was at its peak. In the centuries that have passed since then, however, the bond has been broken.

It is not hard to see how the two species have gone their separate ways. In the centuries since man has become the dominant force on earth, he has molded the dog—and many other animals—according to the rules of his society alone. It did not take man long to spot he could adjust, improve, and specialize the skills of dogs by putting them together selectively for breeding purposes. As early as 7000 BC, in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, for instance, someone noticed the impressive hunting skills of the Arabian desert wolf, a lighter, faster variety of its northern relative. Slowly the wolf evolved into a dog able to chase and catch prey in this harsh climate and, more importantly, to do so according to man’s commands. The dog—variously known as the saluki, Persian greyhound, or gazellehound—remains unchanged today and may well be the first example of a purebred dog. It was certainly not the last. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh hound was bred for hunting. In Russia, the borzoi was bred to chase bears. In Polynesia and Central America, communities even developed dog breeds specifically for food.

The process has continued through the ages, aided by the dog’s willingness to be imprinted by our species. Here in England, for instance, the hunting culture of the landowning aristocracy produced a collection of dogs customized to fulfill specific roles. On a nineteenth-century estate, a typical pack would include a springer spaniel to literally spring or flush the game from cover, a pointer or setter to locate birds, and a retriever to return the dead or wounded game to the handler.

Elsewhere, other breeds maintained the historic bond between man and dog even more closely. Nowhere was this exemplified better than in the development of guide dogs for the blind. It was at the end of the Great War, at a large country convalescent home in Potsdam, Germany, that a doctor working with injured veterans noticed just by chance that when patients who had lost their sight started moving toward a flight of steps his German shepherd would cut them off. The doctor sensed the dog was turning them away from danger. He began training his dogs specifically to use this natural shepherding ability to help humans who could no longer see. The guide dog for the blind developed from there. It may be our most direct throwback to that earliest community. Here was a dog providing a sense that man has lost. Unfortunately, it is a rare example of cooperation in the modern world.

In more recent times, our relationship has changed, as far as I am concerned often to the detriment of the dog. Our former partners in survival have become companions cum accessories. The evolution of the so-called lapdog illustrates this perfectly. The breeds were probably begun in the Buddhist temples of the high Himalayas. There, holy men bred the hardy Tibetan spaniels so that they became smaller and smaller. They then used the dogs as body warmers, teaching them to jump up onto their laps and remain under their robes to fend off the cold.

By the time of Charles II, the idea had traveled to England, where the English toy spaniel evolved from breedings of tinier and tinier examples of the setter. Over time, these little gun dogs were pampered by their wealthy owners and crossed with toy-dog breeds from the East. The breed’s history is still visible today in the distinctive flat-faced features of the King Charles spaniel. This was, to my mind, a pivotal moment in the history of man’s relationship with the dog. To the dog, nothing had changed, but to his former partner, the relationship was entirely new. The dog had ceased to have a function beyond mere decoration. It was a foretaste of what was to come.

Today, examples of the old relationship that man and dog enjoyed are few and far between. Working dogs such as gun dogs, police dogs, and farm dogs, as well as the guide dogs I have already mentioned, spring to mind. However, they are the tiny exceptions. In general, today we have a culture and society in which no consideration has been given to the dog’s place. The old allegiance has been forgotten. Our familiarity has bred contempt, and along the way the instinctive understanding the two species shared has been lost.

Again, it is easy to see why there has been a communications breakdown: the small communities in which we began our history have been replaced by one huge, homogeneous society, a global village. Our lives in the big cities have made us anonymous, and we don’t know or acknowledge the people we are around. If we have become divorced from the needs of our fellow humans, we have lost touch completely with dogs. As we have learned to cope with all the things we have to face in our society, we have simply assumed that our dogs have done the same thing. The truth is they haven’t. Today, man’s concept of the dog’s role and the dog’s idea of its place are completely at odds with each other. We expect this one species to abide by our norms of behavior, to live by rules we would never impose on another animal, say a sheep or a cow. Even cats are allowed to scratch themselves. Only dogs are told they cannot do what they like.

It is ironic—and to my mind, tragic—that of all the 1.5 million species on this planet, the one species blessed with the intelligence to appreciate the beauty in others fails to respect dogs for what they are. As a result, the exceptional understanding that existed between us and our former best friends has all but disappeared. It is little wonder there are more problems with dogs today than there have ever been.

Of course, there are many people who are living perfectly happily with their dogs. The ancient bond clearly lives on inside us somewhere. No other animal evokes the same set of emotions or forms the basis for such loving relationships. The fact remains that people today who are living in harmony with their dogs are getting there by a happy accident rather than through knowledge. Our awareness of the instinctive, unspoken language that we share with our dogs has been lost.

In the last decade, I have attempted to bridge that divide, to try to re-establish that link between man and dog. My search for this missing means of communication has been a long and at times frustrating one. Ultimately, however, it has been the most rewarding and exciting journey I have ever made.

2

A Life with Dogs

It is hard for me to imagine this now, but there was a time when I could not face the prospect of forming a friendship with another dog. In the awful aftermath of Purdey’s death, I had become deeply disillusioned. At one point I even think I came out with the classic line I will never have another dog in this house. The reality was, however, that my affection for dogs ran too deep. And, within a year or so of Purdey’s death, a little gun dog was healing the scars left by my tragic loss.

Despite our early setback, my family and I had settled well into country life. It was my husband’s interest in hunting that brought dogs back into our home. One day in the autumn of 1973, he came back from a rough shoot bemoaning his lack of a good gun dog. He had seen a wounded rabbit slinking its way into the woods to die. If I had a dog that couldn’t have happened, he complained with a look that left little room for doubt about what he was thinking.

So it was that on his birthday that September, his first gun dog, a springer spaniel bitch we called Kelpie, arrived in the house. He loved the dog as I did. It was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with that beautiful breed.

We were, predictably I suppose, terrified of repeating the experience of Purdey and immediately bought one of the standard text books on gun dog training. I have to confess that our first efforts at shaping Kelpie up were far from a roaring success. We wanted to train Kelpie to retrieve, an unnatural act for a springer. Sticking rigidly to the book, we started her off by throwing objects for her to recover and return to us. The book stressed the importance of beginning with something very lightweight. The idea was to teach the dog to be soft mouthed with the objects it recovered.

We decided to use one of Ellie’s old bibs, which we tied in a knot. One morning we took Kelpie outdoors, threw the bib into the distance, and waited for her to return it to us. We were so thrilled when she bounded off and picked up the bib, but our expressions soon changed as she ran straight past us into the house. I remember my husband looking at me with a blank look. What does the book say we do now? he asked. At that point, I think we all collapsed to the floor with laughter. We made an awful lot of mistakes with Kelpie, but we had great fun too. Whenever I feel too full of myself or over-confident about the control I am able to achieve over dogs today, I think back to that moment.

Kelpie was very much my husband’s dog, however. I was so pleased with her and the way she had fitted in so well to our life that soon afterward I decided to get a dog of my own. I had fallen hopelessly for the spaniel and bought a nine-week-old puppy, a bitch from the show strain of the springer spaniel. I called her Lady after the imaginary dog I’d had as a child.

My interest lay less in hunting than in breeding and showing dogs. So it was that Lady became my introduction to that fascinating world. By the middle of the 1970s, I was traveling with her to shows all over the country. She was a lovely dog and was popular with judges wherever we went. By 1976, Lady had qualified for the most prestigious dog show of all, Cruft’s, in London. The day we traveled down to the famous arena at Olympia was a moment of great pride for me.

I found the world of dog shows rewarding and hugely enjoyable. It was, apart from everything else, a great social network, a way of meeting like-minded people. Two of the closest friends I made were Bert and Gwen Green, a well-known couple in the dog world, whose line of dogs, under the Springfayre affix, were hugely popular. Bert and Gwen knew of my interest in moving on to breeding dogs. It was they who gave me Donna, Lady’s three-year-old grandmother. Donna had all the makings of a good, foundation bitch and helped me start my own breeding line. I had soon bred my first ever litter from her, and kept one of the seven dogs for myself, calling him Chrissy.

Chrissy was a show dog that became a very successful working gun dog. He won a puppy class at the age of eight months and qualified for Cruft’s too. The highlight of my time with him came in October 1977 when I took him to the Show Spaniels Field Day, a prestigious event for gun dogs that have qualified for Cruft’s. The competition judged the dogs on their working ability only. I was, as the footballing expression goes, over the moon when Chrissy won the prize for Best English Springer On The Day. I vividly remember the moment the judge handed me the winner’s rosette. Welcome to the elite, he told me. After that, I truly felt I had arrived in the dog world.

Encouraged by this success, I went on to improve my line through two well-bred bitches, and I think I gained a pretty respectable reputation. Throughout this time, I was also adding to the family’s collection of dogs. Tragically, Donna died of a tumor in 1979, aged only eight; but in the aftermath, I also bought a cocker spaniel named Susie for my daughter and bred from her daughter Sandy.

It was, however, Khan, one of the English springer spaniels I had bred, that brought me my greatest success, winning many classes and Best of Breed. He was a wonderful dog with beautiful features, in particular the sort of warm but masculine face that judges were always looking for. In 1983, he qualified for Cruft’s, emulating the feat of six of my previous dogs. To my delight he won his class. Again, the memory of receiving the winner’s card fills me with pride.

As I have explained, I met some wonderful, warm-hearted people who taught me a great deal. There