Can I record this for posterity just in case anyone
is watching [I have a feeling I'm gonna need all the help I can get].
In the course of my duties within the veterinary practice where I worked for twenty years, I got to know Winston Churchill's ex 'Special Branch' minder [or bodyguard - whatever you call it]. He had retired to South-West England and lived with his wife and pyrenean mountain dog, in a cottage on a rural lane along which I drove home every day after work. I used to see the old man walking his huge white dog in the lanes almost daily, and it was a sad day when I attended his home to euthanase the dog, who through age had become moribund and unable to walk. For two weeks as I drove home, I saw the man walking alone, the same route he had previously taken with his dog.
As providence would have it, we had another client of the practice who was in the habbit of taking on animals, becoming bored with them and unloading them without much thought. Now he also had a white pyrenean mountain dog indistiguishable from the old mans, which in fairness he had kept for six years since it was a puppy. True to his usual form, the man turned up at the surgery with the dog one day and said, "I want this dog put to sleep - he's six years old now and they never live beyond seven or eight. I want to save him suffering." Now the man had every legal right to do this, but we, however were not bound to agree to perform the task. I should have sent him away to another vets who were willing to carry out his request - but I didn't. Instead I took a gamble and agreed to take the dog in. I took £50 in payment and then said "I'll take it from here - you don't want to stay around for this do you?" "No", he said and without so much as a backward glance left the building. Ten minutes later I loaded the dog into my Land Rover drove it to the old mans cottage and pushed the lead into his hand. "I've never seen this dog before, and I certainly didn't give it to you," I said. The dumbfounded old man just nodded, then looked at the dog and I drove away. Four years later the man died and the dog remained with his wife for a year or so after that, before it too passed on. During that time each evening I felt a small sense of achievement as I drove past the old man once again out walking his dog.
Nobody wanted them. If it had been chips or cup cakes they would have been snatched up before they hit the table.
