Django is lying at my feet. Outside, for the first time in weeks, it has begun to rain. Softly this time. Four years ago today, as I dug a grave for Flash and set her, wrapped in her blanket, in the ground, the weather changed. As the midday Angelus Bells rang out in the heavy air, the sky darkened and the rain began, heavy, hot, and noisy as it poured through the tree canopy above me. It rained every day for the next three weeks.

Four years ago today we lost Flash, Leica and we were adrift. Four years ago today, as best I can calculate, Django would have been old enough to be weaned from his Mother and, leaving her and his siblings, begin his life with his new owner. Four years ago, KiKi was living in a pen. A little more than six weeks later, we adopted KiKi and Leica had a new companion. Today, Leica is two months gone, and KiKi and Django adjust to a life without her. The paths that Flash, Leica, Django and KiKi followed have been very different. Leica and Flash, together since birth and always here with us. Django and KiKi, wrenched from their original circumstances at two years of age, each spending months in the care of ASH Animal Rescue before coming here to us.

Sometimes it is difficult not to make comparisons. Leica and Flash, given our haphazard attempts at training, did have their idiosyncrasies and the boundaries we set for them were, shall we say “flexible?”. Nevertheless it caused us few issues. We didn’t really manage them terribly well, we were not strict, they were our companions and they shared our life and our home in a way, we’re sure, that some people thought bordering on the eccentric. KiKi and Django have, and continue to be, a very different story. Each has their own behavioural issues. Django never learned to restrain himself around food, is a ‘lover’, and definitely not a fighter (Making no distinction on the basis of gender or species), gets grumpy in the late evening, and hates the rain. KiKi remains wary, to the point of reacting to dogs which are not Dalmatians, or to men with hats or to fluorescent clothing.

When we first brought Leica and Flash home, we were woefully unprepared for what was to come. This was in a time before ‘Google’ was the dominant source of information, we had read what we could and researched a little, we learned as we went. It pretty much worked out, by luck or circumstance. Today, we have two rejected dogs. Essentially they are true to the nature of their breed, neither beyond control, but both damaged by their early experience and the owners who failed them. Both loving and loveable and yet still unable to experience life as freely as they deserve. On a different path now than before. We go on.