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Last year we started feeding a sweet dog in the village – “Leela”. Like so many dogs, she lives chained to the barrel that is her shelter all year round. Her job is to ‘guard’ her chickens from the Cretan martins, though we suspect the martins might be smart enough to realise that being chained, she can’t get to them. Leela often goes off shooting with her owner, Dimitri, she’s fed every day, and we have seen her go into his house in the winter. Compared to many dogs here she doesn’t have too bad a life, and she’s certainly a happy thing. In June, we smugly congratulated ourselves on beefing her up so much, until we looked under her barrel and realised that she had been pregnant and had just given birth to eight large puppies. Hmm, what colour was dad...?!

Becky translated some Greek using “babelfish” to ask Dimitri if we could take her and her puppies. We were delighted when he said we could keep Leela for a while. We don’t know if he even realised she was pregnant. We’re sure he had no plans for the puppies other than to leave them to wander on the road and be killed. Nature’s way, of course.

So, a fortnight after the puppies were born, we bring them home. Becky sleeps out with them the first night, and the next day we build them all a little enclosure down the side of the house. Leela’s a great mum, keeping them all very clean and crying frantically to be let out to go to the loo when she needs. Did you know mums eat their puppies’ pooh? We didn’t, but Lord! afterwards Leela sure lays some monster turds...

At a month, they’re on to some solid food... not so much a hands on experience, as a “paws in” one!

Their lovely personalities are coming through. These two are calm Lawrence – so called because he had an “L” on his neck, and funny, playful Denisa – look at her Denis Healey eyebrows!

With breaking hearts, we chain Leela back to her barrel. She jumps straight in – she is such a ridiculously happy dog! – to retrieve and eat an egg that’s been thoughtfully laid there for her by one of the chickens she guards. Welcome home, Leela! (Not long after this we adopt a husky, Bruce, have a look down the bottom.) Here at six weeks we have Barney (he had a perfect image of Betty Rubble on his face!), Denisa in the middle, and kissing Becky is Echo (named after the loveliest of William’s friends from his park in Catford.)

Here are Lawrence, Barney (see Betty now?!) and Echo fighting over a bone. Yes yes, bones, a mistake, we know, but they loved ‘em!

And some post-bone sleeping!

So... it’s now that they should be going to the rescue place where Becky’s been helping Frieda out. Frieda said she would take them at six weeks, but now she keeps coming up with excuses not to. To cut a long story short, we begin to realise (and are told by several others!) that Frieda has a habit of doing this, as well as falling out with almost everyone she knows for more than a few seconds. Alas, she’s our only contact with a rehoming charity in Germany, run by the wonderful Ilona. This is the puppies’ best, if not only, chance, so through gritted teeth we have to maintain some kind of contact with Frieda for their sake. Oh, if this sounds a bit weird, then yes, she is! She’s since even managed to fall out with Ilona, from the German rehoming charity! How dumb is that?! If you’ve ever had anything to do with people involved with animal welfare you’ll know they’re either marvellous, or mad, MAD cows. Say no more. Anyway, here’s Becky with Dotty (dotty eyebrows!) who loved cuddles, despite her grumpy face!, and Linda with... you should know by now!

They are growing fast, playing like mad ‘n then crashing out in a big lump somewhere. Denisa always likes to rest her head on someone else – we presume it’s the weight of her enormous Fred Basset ears!

To this day, we have no idea whose body this is!

The puppies are now 9 weeks old and eager to go to a home, but not half as eager as we are to see them gone! They’re starting to have little fights to sort out who’s dominant so are making a bit of noise. They’re quiet when it’s dark, and we just hope the neighbours aren’t minding too much. The worst thing is, they’re just bored. They want to be ‘out there’, not cooped up, although they have a big area to play in and lots of things to play with. But, they need a home. Here are handsome Imeldos Marcos (remember Imelda Marcos, of the 2000 pairs of shoes?! Imeldos has four different ones!), Santarini (she has a Christmas tree on her neck) and Tipsy (who has a white tip to his tail. Oh, so do all the others. Bugger.)

At nearly four months, Lawrence and Santarini have new homes in Germany! Here are seven of them playing the night before Lawrence leaves. The little tail you see is Dotty finishing off dinner! You can also see it’s getting more of a struggle to keep them in, as they aren’t big but they are powerful (and persistent!) little things. It’s a constant worry that they’ll pull something on themselves, or get out and fall in the pool...

Here’s Santa really not enjoying having her photo taken for her passport! The staff weren’t too impressed either, tho’ luckily the brown smears are only dirt!

With Claire (who rescued Sophie) we drive 2 ½ hours to Heraklion Airport to put Lawrence on the plane. Alas, unknown to us Lawrence’s flight has been brought forward several hours and he’s missed it. Worse still, as we drive back in the dark, the headlights suddenly reflect in the eyes of some puppies that have just been dumped on the motorway to be run over. Naturally, of course. Lawrence manages to hitch a lift to Germany with Santarini next day, where he’s promptly renamed “Lucky”!

It’s the start of October and fortunately it’s still wonderfully warm. Our neighbours kindly give us their old water tank, which Linda cuts a hole in to make a fabulous, large, watertight kennel. The puppies think this is enormous fun and scrabble about in it, barking gleefully. Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten that our next-door neighbours arrived in the wee hours of the morning for a desperately needed holiday as they’re having a terribly stressful time. They’re furious at the noise – fair enough – though unsurprisingly their shouting at the puppies to shut up doesn’t quite work. Linda heads round to apologise and explain how we’re stressed too, and this is absolutely not what we planned or wanted. All seems fine until we hear them going round the other neighbours trying to whip up some sort of rabble against us. No idea what their idea is – or if they have one – but luckily no one else is playing. Thank heavens we are blessed with other wonderful neighbours. A couple with an olive farm down the road kindly offer a shelter where we can keep the puppies until our stressed neighbours leave. We pop in to feed and play with the pups twice a day, and they are constantly entertained by all the chickens and cats around!, but it feels a bit mean. It’s a really sh*t time, so here are some bottoms.

After a few weeks, the puppies come back home and after this, it’s just a haze of trying to get through each day. As planned, Linda goes to the UK for her sister’s 60th. Lovely Claire and Andrew come to the rescue and we take the puppies on their first walk. The puppies go bananas! No chance of taking a photo! We’re too busy trying to stop them running on the olive nets! They desperately need new owners to give them the time and energy we don’t have. They’re rapidly growing from gorgeous little puppies into feisty, not at all trained, dogs.

We’re utterly depressed and exhausted. Imeldos has started barking at night because the others are keeping him out of both of the kennels. A friend of Claire’s offers to keep him for a night, which becomes two months. Some people are just great, aren’t they? Becky contacts every animal charity that might have something to do with Crete. There’s a possibility they could go to a rehoming kennel – not a new home – in Germany with another charity. The idea of this spurs Ilona into renewed efforts to find them permanent homes. Before we know it, lovely Echo is on her way to Munich! Her she is, having her tea – isn’t she like her mum?

Actually, the phone rings twice that day, and there are two astonishing emails. The first email is from Ingrid, who helps a Dutch charity that rehomes dogs from a shelter in the East of Crete. Ingrid says she can foster four of the pups. Then, Ilona calls to say Echo has a home; she calls again shortly afterwards to say Imeldos may have a home too! Then Ingrid emails again to say they will foster ALL the pups! What an amazing lady – to take on six puppies from someone you’ve never met. We hope there is a God, because she saved us when we were absolutely in the depths of despair. (Don’t forget, we’ve had husky Bruce for a couple of months and he’s taking quite a bit of looking after – energy we just don’t have.) Here are the four little loves we are left with after Echo leaves, out on a walk, looking very swanky in their harnesses, doncha think?!

Becky flies with the four dogs up to Brussels, then drives up to Holland, as this is the quickest route. We have visions of Ingrid in her 3 acre garden, but no! She, hubbie, son and parrot live in a flat with five other dogs! But then there are nine! Ingrid and Walter are excellent with all the dogs; it feels like a huge release. A few hours sleep and it’s back to Brussels for Becky – I can barely manage a farewell tear, such is the relief of them being Somebody Else’s Problem. Here they are “settling in” – you can just hear them saying “we were only following the others”!

Ingrid finds Barney a new home within a day or two. She takes the remaining three for their first trip to the seaside – they go crazy! Especially happy, potty Denisa, who’s always loved water. A few days later Ingrid emails to say that – exactly six months since she was born underneath a rusty oil barrel – lovely Denisa died when she was being spayed. We all cry a lot, poor Ingrid too.

Dotty has a new home, with a parrot and a jack russell! One of Ingrid’s other dogs dies, so she persuades Walter to let them keep Tipsy. They are amazed – as are ALL the puppies’ new owners – just what smart, lovely, friendly dogs they are. Here is dear Tipsy looking after tiny Dobby from Spain who is on a drip. Ingrid says Tipsy is absolutely gently and loving. How gorgeous.

Last, but absolutely not least, fabulous Imeldos goes to his new home just in time for Christmas. We quickly hear that the daughter is “very much in love” with him! And he has – like lovely Lawrence – been renamed “Lucky”!

We’ve had pictures of the puppies having a great time in their new homes. Ilona tells us the new owners are all delighted by how clean they are (“not one pee, Becky, not one!”) and they are all doing brilliantly at their training classes. Echo’s and Santarini’s owners meet up and the girls have a fabulous time! Lawrence adores his new friend, in case you can’t tell!

So, that’s the puppies’ story. We had Leela spayed, so no more puppies for her. We hope you enjoyed reading about all of them as much as we loved having them in our lives. Yes, at the end it became very stressful – there seemed no way out – but ultimately we feel blessed by our eight delightful puppies and by wonderful people coming to our aid. We’d do things differently another time, for sure! And for sure, there will be another time. For now we say, thank you Claire and Andrew for your sensible suggestions, good cheer and Lidl wine! Thank you Dimitri, you could have said “no”. Thank you Ilona and Thomas for your hard work. Thank you Ingrid. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Finally, puppies, have fun! And remember: be good, and if you can’t be good, don’t get caught!

A Great Big Brucey “PS”!

Bruce was a big part of our doggie 2007 and we hope he won’t mind being a PS to some puppies! We tried to weave his story in with the puppies’ more, but it just didn’t work. Here he is!

The day before her holiday finished, a neighbour asked us to keep an eye on the dog next to Leela, because he “seems to have a problem with his foot”. We went to check up on him next day and “problem” was a huge understatement. He was covered in literally thousands of flies. They had eaten away at both ears, which were streaming blood. He couldn’t put down his “problem” foot because one toe was eaten away by maggots. Unsurprisingly, it stank of rotting meat. It really was one of the most disgusting things we’ve ever seen. Here’s what’s left of his toe a little later when we’ve cleaned his foot up.

With the aid of babelfish, Becky asked Leela’s Dimitri to ask Bruce’s owner if we could take him to the vet. (Thank you, again, Dimitri!) The owner, Yannis, said yes. The next day we went to the vet, Giorgos, windows open all the way because of the stench. Poor Bruce was so beat he didn’t mind Becky - a total stranger - lifting him into the car. He must have been incredibly relieved to get away from the flies. Giorgos called Yannis to tell him how to look after Bruce’s bad foot and also that Yannis needed to clean Bruce’s sh*t away from around where he was chained. Yannis wasn’t interested and said he wanted Bruce back from us only when Bruce was 100% healthy. Then Giorgos asked if Yannis would like to contribute a little bit of money. We would do the work – nurse Bruce, give him his antibiotics etc. At this point Yannis said he didn’t care if Bruce came back or not. So, we took Bruce! Here he is, sleeping in the sun that day, as we were round the back, building him a ‘tent’ from an old mosquito net to keep the flies off. You can see he’s a bag of bones, only 22kg – the puppies (a quarter of his size!) were 14kg. Awful.

The first night, he slept underneath the mosquito net outside, as Becky slept next to him on the floor in the back bedroom. Bless him, the next morning he greeted us with big wags of his tail! We sat with him during the day and picked maggots off with twigs as chopsticks. The second morning, he’d had enough of being cooped up! He tried to get out and stuck his head through the mosquito net, which is how he greeted us, looking like Elizabeth I with an enormous ruff!

Bruce was just a lovely boy! He adored his walks, his food... everything! Giorgos said he was 3-4 years old. We think he’d been in a home most of that time, as he knew some Greek words, was well behaved inside and wasn’t frantic about food. From his behaviour, he’d been mistreated by a man, and we presume he’d got too much to handle, so was dumped somehow. He lived very happily outside the front door, where he could watch the world go by! He took it into his head to pop and see the neighbours a few times, so we kept him on a long lead. His ears healed slowly and the fur grew back, and he bit off the bone in his foot, which also started to heal. He bonded with Linda especially, as she gave him his antibiotics and did most of the walking.

All the info we got from the internet made huskies sound like wonderful dogs – they’re clean, quiet, playful, lots of fun, and they love people and other dogs. Certainly, Bruce thought William was splendid, and William wasn’t too bothered by Bruce (about as good as it’s gonna get with William!) When it was hot, we’d put the aircon on and have Bruce inside. He used to leap around on his bed, terribly excited!, and then found it more fun to sneak closer and closer to William! Things seemed to be working out fine and we thought we’d keep Bruce.

Bruce had bonded with all of us so well, and seemed so focussed on Linda, that after a couple of months, silly Becky said “oh, let’s see what he’s like off the lead”. We let him off and... he ran. In the opposite direction. We called him. He carried on running. We got in the car and pretended to drive off. He looked at us, laughed with joy at his freedom, and carried on running away. We finally recaptured him trying to play with a dog near where he was originally chained. A second, far longer, session on the internet revealed that You Never Let Huskies Off The Lead because they run away. Never. They dig holes to get out. They climb up fences to get out. They hang on the underside of cages trying to find a way out. And when they get out, they will run and run! Here’s Linda with a firm grip on him!

We realised that what that meant for poor Bruce was almost every minute of his life would be on a lead or chain, except for the odd time he’d come inside. He couldn’t be left alone with William, as one playful (or otherwise) nudge would knock poor William off his shaky pegs. We tried to find an enclosed field or anywhere here to exercise him off-lead, but absolutely nothing doing. And he was a husky! With their three layer coats, they can survive –50C; Crete is no place for them. He did like his kennel when it rained, though!

Bruce adored running by the side of the car every morning, but it wasn’t enough. With the cooler weather, and as he felt better, he’d been getting increasingly lively and frustrated being tied up. It was fabulous to see him feeling so well and looking so healthy (32kg!), but the better he felt the more we realised that we couldn’t keep him. He needed a home where they understood huskies and where he could run and play whenever he wanted! The final straw was reading that huskies can be killers of anything not a human or other dog. Almost all our Greek neighbours have poultry and cattle and if Bruce had escaped, he easily could have killed something. We’d be in trouble, and he could be shot. Anyway, here he is with his number 1 mum, having a little sit by the seaside. Sly eyes, eh! What naughtiness is he planning?

English Husky Rescue, total shower. So, it was back to the Germans again. Becky contacted three places and all replied within a day or two, and all positively. One place in North Germany could take Bruce immediately! The least stressful option was to fly him cargo from Athens. Becky and lovely Andrew took him on an overnight ferry to Athens, frolicked (they hoped exhaustingly!) on the beach with him all day, then said a sad goodbye at Athens airport. Early next morning, Bruce came out of his crate in Hannover, and jumped straight into his waiting car! We didn’t realise, but in fact he was going to a foster family with a husky (“Maja”), not into kennels. The family must have realised within just a few hours what a great guy he was, as a couple of days later they sent pictures of him skiing with them in Austria! That’s him at the front, going “mmmm, snowwwww, yeahhhhhhh”!!!

He and Maja quickly got a major lurve thing going. Enough said! Bruce could melt the hardest heart! Well done, you lovely boy!