This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 51

Nina and Nero were characters and no mistake! They bounced off each other as though they were made for each other.

Two beautiful dogs that our children grew up with and adored.

Haydn has a character all his own – always has been.

Haydn and Bear

He loved those dogs, and trusted them implicitly. He went in to the kitchen where the dogs lived and he showed them his lovely burger.

“I’ve got a burger,” he said in a sing-song voice – you probably know the one I mean. ‘Ner, ner, ne ner, ner!’

Suddenly he screeched and we ran into the kitchen, fearing the worst.

Haydn had showed Nero his burger, but he got a little too close and the meat patty was stolen from Haydn’s burger bun, leaving him with just bread and a bit of relish.

Rom

Because the dogs were so huge and powerful-looking, we had to be aware that they drew attention and sometimes it was the wrong attention.

Getting out of the car one day, struggling with Haydn in his car seat, a man approached me. He was a large, bulky guy and I was instantly wary of him.

“Can I speak to your husband?”

My first thought was ‘Nope! I don’t want you anywhere near my husband, thank you very much!’

“What do you want him for?”

“It’s about your dogs,” he said.

Rom (front) Ninus (back)

“Well they’re my dogs, so what do you want?”

“Can I borrow them? I live down the road,” he said and pointed to the house. “And I could really do with borrowing them.”

I looked at him a little puzzled. It’s not like they are in any way similar to a lawn-mower.

“You want to borrow my dogs?” I asked.

“Yeah. I’ve got a security job at Monsters of Rock,” (local Rock Festival) he said. “And if I have dogs, I get better pay and more hours and I need the money.”

At that point, my common sense threw out his ridiculous statement as a lie, so I told a story of my own.

“No, they don’t know you and wouldn’t work with you. They’re not trained as security dogs, they’re trained as guard dogs and wouldn’t respond well in crowds. In short, no, you’re not borrowing my dogs.”

End of conversation, but not the end of the story.

A few months later, the guy that lived in that house he pointed to was sent-down (jailed) for burglary. His habit of thieving from garden sheds finally caught up with him.

If I had (stupidly) allowed a stranger to take my dogs, he would no doubt have locked them in his house and rather than earning an honest night’s wage as security at a rock festival, he would have raided our sheds with the danger of my two beautiful dogs nullified.

Some people are utter scum. I value my pets far more than he believed.

I’m still a little gob-smacked about it.

Nina and Nero became parents themselves (before our kids were born) and eight beautiful puppies came into the world.

Nero kept out of the way. He was put in the shed at the bottom of the garden – when I say ‘shed’, I mean ‘stable’ built just for him. He wanted nothing to do with those puppies for the first weeks of their lives and he deliberately ignored them when they went out at a few weeks old.

Rom grew too big for his bed

At exactly five weeks old, he deemed them robust enough for ‘Daddy playtime!’

He stole a tea-towel from the kitchen and went out to the puppies.

Bear

I caught Nero taking five or so of his babies for a ‘drag’ around the garden.

The huge great beast of a dog holding a piece of cloth (by then it was no longer tea-towel-shaped) and allowing the puppies to pull him. Then he pulled them around and after that, he accepted their existence and welcomed them in. It did seem that until that point he thought they were just too small and insignificant for him to bother with, but as soon as they became fun, they were his!

Ninus and Bear Just after we'd lost Rom, we found Bear and bought him home in time for my birthday

All the pups went to good homes. The last two to be sold were girls and they both went to the same house. The people buying them couldn’t bear to separate them and I knew they’d have a wonderful home.

Seven or eight years later, I got a phone call. The guy that had bought the last two pups asked if we still had Nina and Nero. I told him we did. He wanted to know if they were having any more pups because he’d just lost both girls – one to bone cancer and the other to pining for her sister.

What a shame – and a few years later, we went through almost the same situation with Ninus and Rom.

Rom

Pets… they leave their paw prints on your heart for sure.

I have to apologise for the photos. I have them scattered all over the place and can't find the ones I want, so these are ones I have to hand right now.