4th November 2009

Mad About The Dog

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Many of us have seen a bedraggled, thin cat or dog looking pitifully at us when we’re on holiday and wondered if we could rescue it. Belinda Harley did just that.

In this extract from Belinda Harley’s new book, Mad About The Dog,, published by Souvenir Press, she describes how she met the dog that was to change her life and teach her a lesson in love. Mad About The Dog is the intensely moving true story of Goofy’s extraordinary journey to be permanently united with Belinda. Amidst the joy and the laughter of this little tale there are some important insights into euthanasia, the most difficult decision you could ever make for an animal you love.

We have three copies of the book to give away. Just email your name and address to editor@pethealthcare.co.uk by 23rd November.

PHC readers can order Mad About the Dog for the special price of £8.99 (£1 off RRP) by calling 01235 827702 and quoting GOOFY. Postage & packing is free on all UK orders.

Alternatively, visit Amazon or look in good bookshops for Mad About The Dog by Belinda Harley, published by Souvenir Press Ltd, RRP £9.99

"Nothing moved on the terrace in the afternoon sun, except the quick flick of lizards in the rough dry stone walls. Suddenly, there was a frantic scrabbling from behind the wall itself. A black nose and a ginger and white face appeared, followed by the rest of a small dog, who made a giant leap for me.

As my friend Daphne said, "Dog looked at Belinda. Belinda looked at Dog. And it was all over."

I have always loved Paxos. It has the lush green calm that Corfu, in the days when it flaunted its beauty at the writer Lawrence Durrell, once had. I had always liked the way that, when they made small-scale maps of the Ionian Sea, they didn’t bother to put Paxos, let alone its tiny sibling Anti-Paxos, on the map at all. They were just left to the imagination... As a child, arriving by caique, I was bewitched by it; as an adult, when tired and saddened by the pressures of the outside world, I used it as a place where mentally one could detox from London, as far from the canapé circuit as it is possible to get. I would take long walks - christened "death marches" by my friend Daphne, who often came to stay - when I rented a small house in the hills. Armed with a water bottle and a straw hat that would have shamed a seaside donkey, I would climb steep paths through the olive groves, exhilarated. Every sense was awakened: I’d catch a sudden intense whiff of fresh figs, oozing their perfume over a sunny wall; shiver, after climbing a hill in the hot sun, at the extraordinary transition into the deep dark cool of the porch of a lonely church, shockingly white amid the olive trees. I love it. Of course I was just a visitor; but I knew by sight the mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins of almost everyone in the tiny village of Loggos.

Up in the hills, the small stone house that had belonged to Spiro’s mother Electra baked like a golden bun in the sun, among crumbling terraces of olives and almond trees. It was one of those hot afternoons on Paxos when the only thing to do... is absolutely nothing. Everything was mesmerised by the heat, the stillness burst only by the tantrum of crickets. We would wait for evening before moving again, when a cool breeze would lift the air and the Paxiots - who are inveterate nocturnal animals, young and old - would suddenly emerge down the in the village beside the sea, talking on the jetty walls, drinking, eating, sniffing the scent of jasmine mingled with their last cigarette in the night air. They prepared for this tremendous burst of night-time activity with a short but very sweet sleep; we followed their example, drowsing in the hot afternoon without a thought of interruption.

Having hauled himself into my arms, this refugee dog was going nowhere. He was - debatably - spaniel, with a beautiful head and dark intelligent eyes. His stocky body and broad white chest seemed to justify legs rather longer than those God had given him. God had also made him ginger, over this ears and in patches elsewhere. The proud body and slightly stubby little legs gave him an endearing and entirely original shape. He licked me confidently.

I rang my friend Spiro, who had rented me the house for the summer. "Oh, that is Goofy! He runs away from his owners up the hill. Belinda, that is a wonderful dog - he came to stay with me in the winter." I wasn’t sure that the name Goofy suited him at all; he was too sussed out, too bright. But then I remembered that my Greek neighbours sometimes adopted English or American showbusiness or sports celebrity names for their dogs; there was a poodle-shaped animal at the village shop who answered, bizarrely, to the name of Alan, after an unwitting Alan Shearer.

As the evening cool came, I walked down the dappled stone track through the olive groves to the village by the sea, my new companion running delightedly in small circles round me. I expected that on arrival in the village, Goofy would be off, prospecting for food from holiday-makers at the tiny tables by the water. I was secretly rather flattered at his loyalty. He would head off towards each café table and cajole food, focussing pleading eyes on the most tender-hearted target. Then he would run back to me. Never was a dog so gregarious; but he was also touchingly faithful.

Night wore on, and Daphne and I had to drive in my little car to the port of Gaios, where a friend had arrived. Farewell Goofy ... but in a single bound, he jumped onto the back seat of the car, front paws squarely placed so that he could lean out of the window as we drove, as proud as the figurehead on the prow of a ship. As his ears flew back in the wind, it looked as if he were smiling... I gave myself a shake.

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