Sunday 5 August 2012

The doghouse - Susie

Just a recap on yesterday's doghouse post - it was a year earlier than I thought, it must have been 1966 and I was 12.  I've remembered a day out when things went wrong again.  I don't know where we went, but my mother suddenly hissed that Diana Rigg had just walked past.

I have no idea what I'd been doing on the evening that The Avengers was on television, but I'd never seen it.  In the Honor Blackman days I'd been in bed by the time it was on and later I did see the Mrs Peel series, but only the first episodes had been shown - I've looked it up and they started in October 1965.  Anyway, not having ever heard of Diana Rigg I didn't take any notice and neither, apparently, did anyone else, and my mother lost her temper at having been ignored.  Really, it was a most peculiar holiday.

Susie was black all over with some white spots.  Her previous owner believed that she was Labrador with a touch of Dalmation, but I've no idea if that was true.  As I said, she and I became inseparable  and we used to go out for hours at a time.  My mother was rather over-protective of me and I had rarely been allowed to wander off on my own before (my sister was allowed much more freedom, but I was always thought of as the baby of the family and treated as such) but Susie was thought of as totally reliable and quite able to look after me.

Susie was quite thin when she came to us.  None of our dogs had ever been greedy, but Susie was never confident that there would ever be enough to eat at the next meal, so she might as well take advantage of every eating opportunity that came about.  This is typical of black Labs of course - in her later years when I'd left home and she didn't get so much exercise, she became very overweight, nearly box-shaped, although it never seemed to affect her health and she lived to 16.

But this is going way ahead.  She had a lovely personality and my mother hankered after some puppies in the house again, and the next thing was that a litter of eight pups was born to Susie.  Simon was the father of course.  They were named Muldoon, Tutankhamun, Rameses, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Xavia, Yolande and Zena.  A couple of themes going on there, it seems.  Homes were found for five of the puppies (my mother always regretted giving away Zena) but we kept three of them.  So the next three chapters will be given to Muldoon, Neffi and Cleo.

5 comments:

Liz said...

Oooh puppies! Will there be photos?

Your comments are quiet this weekend Z, everyone must be watching the Olympics.

kippy said...

A Labramation? The dog and I went on a walk today and found a lost chihuahua. Luckily I knew where it lived and we herded it home. The lady owner yelled at her husband in Greek. Probable translation was "You idiot, it is all your fault".

Paff Rine said...

I'm can quite see now why you feel you are part dog yourself Z, you really were brought up with them! I have already lost track of how many there have been and you are only up to teenage!

Z said...

I haven't found any photos from that time, though I know there were some.

I think it would be quite easy to lose a chihuahua, I'd probably just leave it in a pocket or something.

We still only had four dogs at this time, it was after that when the number jumped to seven and after I left home that things got a bit out of control at my mother's house!

mig said...

I'm loving your dog stories. They are all so completely different and colourful.