My Dog: An Irrational Purchase

written by Craig Towersey

I guess most men get to a certain age and feel there is something missing in their lives, some sort of mid life event, sometimes referred to as a crisis. It usually manifests itself in the acquisition of a sports car, a powerful motorbike or a new wife or girlfriend about half their own age. My own life had undergone dramatic change over the last few years and somewhere, deep inside me, I suspect I was hankering for something.

No fancy sports car for me, my new partner, Ann, had one that I could drive when I wished, no great desire for a Harley Davidson either, sure it was on my wish list, but it was way down there with lots of other things jostling for position above it. No, my irrational purchase, the sure sign that I had finally lost it, was a puppy.

It came to me in a flash of inspiration as Christmas 2002 was fast approaching. Ann had owned a Golden Labrador, named Meg, before we had met. They had been inseparable best friends, this was before Ann and I were together, but I remember how she cried when Meg had died. Ann loved dogs and dogs loved Ann. It would be a great surprise Christmas present for her.

I was not so naïve as to not realise that owning a dog brought with it responsibilities, but we were fortunate in a lot of respects. Ann and I had been together just long enough to get out of our rented digs and now owned our own little cottage and I felt I now had the time to devote to new member of our little family. The year before I had escaped from the nine to five grind, I had started a small business that saw me working mostly from home. Our small ten foot by six foot spare bedroom had become the hub of my small empire, where I spent most of my days and things were going very well. Sure I did have to go out and visit customers, but my time was my own to control, it would be great to have a dog about the house to keep me company while Ann was out at work, and when I did have to go out, the dog could come too. Having thought it through to this very elementary level, my mind was made up.

As planning for Christmas by men goes, I was well ahead of the game, it was only October and of course I felt that I had plenty of time to bring this germ of an idea to fruition. I began surreptitiously scanning the local papers and free adverts for puppies. I made a few phone calls and even made an appointment to go out and visit a local breeder of Labradors and Retrievers. One day when Ann was at work, I took a drive out into the Sussex countryside and found myself rolling down the driveway of an impressive farm. Now this was not your stereotypical farmyard, no Darling Buds of May ramshackle yard covered in mud with chickens running hither and thither, no, this was an immaculate livery yard, with not so much as a strand of hay defacing the pristine concrete. Row upon row of stables gave way, to row upon row of more stables and I felt more than a little self conscious, driving through the yard in my small Ford estate car past legions of Range Rovers, battalions of Discoveries and regiments of Mercedes ML’s. The only crop that this farm produced was cash. My sister kept horses and I knew enough to realise that to keep your precious Daughters Pony in a gaff like this you needed very deep pockets.

I found the house, a sprawling bungalow that must have covered half an acre on its own, with views in almost every direction for miles over the flat pasture that lies between the South Downs and the Coast. I was met by a very well spoken and evidently highly posh middle aged lady, who took me down a long cement path that led to a number of small buildings with caged runs. I was delighted to see that they were almost all full of puppies. Golden Labradors, Black Labradors, Golden Retrievers, varying in aged from just a few weeks old, to a ready to go two and a bit months old. I stooped by each run, poking my fingers into the cages while the yapping and whining puppies licked and chewed at my fingers, whilst explaining my wishes to Mrs Posh.
The cost?
£550 for each puppy, she told me.
Good lord, I hadn’t planned for that, but I kept smiling, it was a little more than I had budgeted for, but hey, this was a Christmas gift for my beloved, it would be worth it.
Christmas?
Out of the question, she said, there was a waiting list, she explained, to have a puppy from this fine establishment your name went down on a list and you parted with your cash. If I were very lucky and acted today, I might get to choose a puppy from a litter in the middle of next year.
I told her I had really wanted a puppy sooner than that, but that I would give it some thought and left, promising faithfully that I would be back in touch.
So much for that idea:

However, I was no quitter; all I needed was a plan B.

The Ace up my sleeve was Wales. Although I was now living in Sussex, I had lived in Wales for many years before moving to the south of England, my Mother and Sisters still lived there, so did my Ex- Wife and my two Sons. I visited every two weeks to see my Boys and I knew that Wales was famous for many things, including rain, rugby football and puppy farms.

Plan B swung into action and I called my Sister and asked her to make enquiries on my behalf. I wanted a Golden Labrador puppy and asked her to track one down. In our many phone conversations over the next few weeks the major difference I noticed was price. Puppies that cost a small fortune in Sussex and Hampshire were wholesaling for not much more than half the price at dozens of locations within twenty miles of Bridgend, where most of my family lived. I collected phone numbers and made a few tentative enquiries. Slowly my plans took shape.

On a Sunday at the end of November I set off from home, alone, in what was a very familiar routine, to drive to Wales and visit my Son’s, who were then twelve and fourteen years old. My younger Sister, Karen, met me at my Mothers house with loads of adverts for puppies and I began to make calls. On the second attempt I was convinced I had struck gold.
Yes, the lady on the phone told me, she had three puppies, Pedigree Golden Labradors, all bitches and ready to go. The price? £220 each. I took down her address and some basic directions and told her that we would be there in an hour our so. The boys, Gareth, Rhys and I, set off in the car for some remote hamlet in the Hills of the Neath Valley, near Crynant.

The boys, both ardently Welsh, were unimpressed with the surrounds as we drove ever higher into the hills, passing through the stereotypical Welsh valley towns of row upon row of grey stone terraces. This was not the kind of Wales that they were used to. After carefully following the directions I had been given, which proved very accurate, our final destination hove into view. It was the very antithesis of Mrs Posh and her Sussex Pony farm, which came to mind as we parked on the steep muddy verge alongside the house. The house, a small and unkempt single storey affair was in a nook on a windswept mountain moor, surrounded on three sides by a corral of tumbledown outbuildings, some of which had slate tiles clinging to the low pitched roofs and others bare to the battens with the wind howling through. We were greeted by a woman who I guess, was in her late fifties or early sixties, speaking in a thick Welsh accent, she invited us into the kitchen. A small child followed her every move. The kitchen was separated from the rest of the house by a child proof gate and behind it were three very cute, chubby, fluffy little Golden Labrador puppies,
“They are all pedigree bitches,” the woman told us, “would you like to see the mother?”
“Yes please,” I replied. I had no idea what I was looking at her for, but I knew that good breeders always showed the parents, so I best take a look.

She left us in the kitchen with the puppies whilst she went outside to one of the tumbledown sheds and a few minutes later she appeared with a bitch at the back door, holding the dog by the scruff.
“This is mum.” She said.

I looked, and even my inexpert eyes could see that the pedigree of these dogs was going to be questionable, if indeed I was looking at their Mum. She was quite small, slight even, for a Labrador, and her coat, very reddish gold in colour, looked quite long, to the extent that her shaggy mane seemed positively curly. I had another look at the puppies, which were pale to the point of being white by comparison. Mum, was however, very pleased to see us, wagging her tail, making a fuss and generally exuding good nature. I thought this was good sign. No mention was made of Dad, so I never got to see the stud. We were interrupted at this point by the voice of the small child.
“Nanny, one of the puppies has pooped on the kitchen floor”.
“Put some paper over it,” she said, “I’ll clear it up in a minute.”
With that she disappeared to take mum back to whichever dilapidated shed she had come from and returned a few minutes later. She got out some paperwork.
“These are her pedigree papers,” she said, handing me an A4 sheet, “they’re not show dogs though; you understand you can’t show them.”
I assured her that we had no intention of showing the bitch or even of breeding from her, she was just going to be a family pet. She gave me the papers and I gave her £220.
“Would you like to pick one?” she asked.
Clearly the paperwork would apply to any of the three small bitches on the floor. There was nothing to choose between them, they were all equally cute, none seemed more bold or timid than the others but at that very moment one of the pups slid on her belly, her back legs trailing out behind her, from under the kitchen table, and began gnawing at the toe cap of my boot. She had just settled my quandary and I bent down to pick her up.
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Eight weeks,” she said, “but they are weaned.”

The boys and I put the puppy in the back of the car and set off for my Mum’s house in Bridgend, but the puppy had no intention of travelling alone, and despite its very short legs and small statue she managed to scramble over the divide onto the back seat with Rhys. The strain of this manoeuvre had a dramatic and unpleasant side effect. A noxious smell began pervading the car, our flatulent little puppy had blown off.
“Jesus,” said Rhys, ”that stinks.”
Windows were quickly wound down, whilst the puppy climbed onto Rhys’s lap and began to lick his face.
“Well that was interesting,” I said, “we got the papers before we picked the puppy. Do you think we got the right one?”
“I don’t know,” said Rhys, “but I hope we got the one that just pooped on the kitchen floor.”
Quick witted as ever, but I had to agree with him. If the smell of the gas alone was that bad, the thought of an accident in the car that I was going to spend the next few hours in didn’t bare thinking about. We still had a very long way to go before we got home to Sussex.

At Mums house we had a chance to get a good first look at our purchase. She trotted into the house as confidently as if she owned the place, much to the chagrin of my Mum’s cat, who promptly left by the back door, having had a good hiss and spit to let everyone know that she, for one, didn’t approve. The Puppy was to die for cute, straight out of a toilet tissue commercial, small, no bigger than the cat, big brown eyes, a thick short tail and her very fluffy coat seemed as white as snow. Making herself right at home, she squatted and peed on Mum’s lounge carpet. Whoops, she sure knew how to make an entrance. According to her papers, this cute little creature was the product of a no doubt very brief encounter between her mother, Teresa Trick or Treat and her father, Brave Dyson and went by the Kennel Club name of Chorus Girl. The name definitely didn’t suit her. She certainly wasn’t noisy, even her flatulent outbursts came more unexpectedly than a Stealth Fighter. Nor was Chorus Girl something I could see myself shouting from the back door of an evening in the hope of getting her inside the house. The first thing that I would change about this adorable little puppy, was her name.

Later that evening I dropped the boys back to their mothers’ house, where we said our farewells, and I set off to tackle the two hundred mile trek back to my own house in Sussex. With a towel to sit on, I put the puppy on the passenger seat beside me and off we went. It soon became clear that the puppy had no intentions of staying where I had put her. Despite the effort involved, she clambered over the gap between the two seats, scrabbled over the parking brake and climbed into my lap. With one hand I scooped her up and put her back on the passenger seat, fussing her with my left hand, whilst driving with my right. This worked for a little while, but as soon as I ignored her she clambered across the gap and into my lap again. After several trips between the two seats I gave up. It would be safer, I thought, for her to sit on my lap and for me to concentrate on my driving. She curled up on my lap and slept. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, she would wake, get up and turn around, then collapse back into my lap to sleep some more. The only problem was that this exercise seemed to involve blowing off with every stretch. So I drove on through the darkness with a small flatulent puppy right under my nose, sticking my head out of the open window at regular intervals.

Now rumour has it that Labradors aren’t the brightest of sparks, whilst they have the most wonderful nature, without an evil bone in their bodies, they are not the sharpest knife in the canine drawer. Full of beans, perhaps that was what this one was fed at the puppy farm, insatiable appetites, incredibly loyal and generally quite dim. With my Welsh connections, whilst heading for home, I decided on the name Twp.

Twp, literally translated from Welsh, is Stupid, but meant in a more affectionate way than it at first seems. A fairer translation would be daft or silly, as the word Twp is always used in an affectionate way in the Welsh language. It had a nice ring to it and seemed to fit the bill perfectly, hopefully summing up this puppy’s personality whilst at the same time paying homage to her Celtic roots. It was decided before I got back to Sussex, that the new arrival would be introduced as Twp the dog.

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