There’s no doubt that, through centuries of domestication, we have developed a very particular connection with dogs. We have bred and refined their characteristics to suit our own, human ends. Whether to hunt, to guard, to herd or retrieve, we have bent their development to our needs.The degree to which their evolution has been manipulated by…

In fourteen plus years with our dogs, trips to the vet haven’t been too common and for the most part only a few of them have been real emergencies. The usual stuff you might expect, cuts and scrapes mostly. This week however, was a little different. Coming home we were greeted as usual by an excited KiKi…

Leica and Flash were intended as a gift to mark Martha’s birthday a little over 14 years ago. When we lived and worked in Scotland it had been impractical for us to have a dog, so when we moved to Ireland and the circumstances allowed, that all changed. It seems difficult to separate the two…

When we first decided to bring KiKi to live with us we knew that our relationship with her was likely to be very different at first than had been the case with our previous dogs. The first two and a half years of her life were spent elsewhere, with a different family, and we knew…

The scientific name for ‘dog’ generally, specifically and more usually applied to domesticated dogs, is Canis Lupus Familiaris. I studied Latin at school, a long time ago. It’s usefulness has has been questionable, pub quizzes aside. The ability to understand the root of words in more modern languages hasn’t really done a great deal for me as…

This past year with KiKi has been more fraught than I could ever have imagined. At times her behaviour has strained relationships with friends and family members. She is not Flash, she is not Leica. She is, however, ours. Entirely. We adopted her, in some peoples opinions, hastily. Time though, was not on our side….

So every Spring, the pounds and rescues fill up with more abandoned dogs. Anyone who has owned a dog for long is going to know that housetraining a dog isn’t usually a long term process yet still people will dump their dogs if they are not clean about the house, as if expecting this part…

Through all the difficult times since we brought KiKi home, it’s easy perhaps to overlook just how much she has brought to us. The loss of Flash was incredibly hard for us to deal with, so much a part of our life as she had been. KiKi is a very different character, although her mischievousness and…

Anyone who has owned a dog for any length of time understands well enough that ‘training’ them is an ongoing process. New situations and experiences will usually require some adjustment time, but a well trained dog can be expected to cope with most things, and knowing their character or nature can help predict how they will…

There’s proving to be a great deal we don’t properly understand about KiKi, and it’s certainly more complex than we were initially prepared for. Still, there are pleasures to be had in what we do know of her.  At just over three years of age her enthusiasm for life is boundless. She leaves us in awe…

We have been trying now, for what seems like a long time, to manage KiKi’s behaviour. Her unpredictability has been a major factor. The struggle to understand how she feels and why she reacts as she does goes on. In broad terms, obviously, surprises don’t usually turn out to be good experiences, that much is…

In her past life, before us, before ASH, KiKi had apparently been kept by a family from Finland. I joked that we might need a phrasebook to help us communicate better with her, that English might not be her first language. At times, even now, she simply stares, unmoving as you ask something of her,…

When I first started to think about writing this blog, as is fairly obvious I hope from the name, it was on my mind that so many thousands of dogs were dying needlessly each year in shelters and pounds across the country. Realistically I can’t imagine it was ever likely that KiKi become a part…

When we adopted KiKi our motivations were not selfless, we were not “rescuing” her in the way that many dogs are genuinely rescued from being euthanised. Rather we were very, very specific. Rightly or not we had come to believe that we needed a new companion for Leica and that in a female Dalmatian we…

In the 1962 film, “The Manchurian Candidate”, one of the leading characters, Raymond Shaw (played by Laurence Harvey) returns from the Korean War, ostensibly as a hero. Behind this facade though, the darker truth is that he has been ‘brainwashed’ and will, when triggered by the sight of a Queen of Diamonds playing card, carry…

As Flash and Leica grew older we were not unaware of the fact that the day would come when we would lose one of them. Even as they passed into their second decade with us they remained lively and vigorous. Flash did, slowly at first, begin to show some signs that her age was telling. Never…

When we brought KiKi to live with us we did have at least half an idea what to expect of her. Putting aside her behavioural issues in the wider world, it has been  pretty entertaining getting to know her individual traits. She turns out to be far more ‘vocal’ than Flash or Leica have ever…

“Put to sleep”, sounds gentle doesn’t it? The heart-rending decision many people have to make to have their dog euthanised is perhaps deserving of a euphemism. We have never had to make that decision directly, the closest we came was when Martha’s Mother’s dog Nicky had become so ill that it seemed like the humane…

It was when we first came across ASH Animal Rescue’s website that we began to get a sense of the scale of the problems associated with dog welfare in Ireland. We had, quite frankly never given it much thought. Yes, we knew dog pounds existed, we knew rescue centres existed. We knew that unwanted dogs were…

We know little of KiKi’s past. Nothing at all really about her formative experiences. What we have seen is a dog whose behaviour can touch both extremes. Gentle, even docile, entirely at ease around Leica without a hint of aggression. Lively and playful, a little wilful, clearly pretty smart too. Everything we had hoped for, indeed expected,…

The past few days with KiKI have been difficult. Since her first outbursts on Sunday, she continues to be volatile in the presence of other dogs, Leica being the singular exception thankfully. A visit to Martha’s sister and her dog Barney seemed to start well, but quickly descended into a scrap. Neither dog was injured…

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld as interviewed in the Errol Morris film, “The Unknown Known”, there are things we know, or rather understand, that we do not know about KiKi. There are too, things we think we know about dogs, about Dalmatians, that will be tested in the coming months. The test starts now. It’s Sunday morning…

On the journey back from ASH with KiKi, we go over the things we have read about how best to introduce her to our house, and how to manage her integration with Leica. We chose not to subject Leica to the eight or nine hour round trip by car when we collected KiKi. Instead, we’ve…

So. KiKi is coming home. We collected her today from ASH. The journey down to Wicklow seemed endless. When we arrived we found Remi, Helena and their volunteers swamped. Six dogs were to be rehomed today, including KiKi, while the rest of the dogs still needed to be walked and fed and tended to. KiKi…

We understand that KiKi’s rehoming will be unlike our past experience with our other dogs. The first three years after bringing Leica and Flash home had been a rollercoaster of learning on the fly. We were each used to having dogs around the house throughout our childhood, and we had read up on what we…

Having been to ASH and seen KiKi we knew we wanted to bring her home. Circumstances though did not allow us to take her then and there. A family wedding in England meant that we were scheduled to leave the country for a week just a few days later, and we knew that to bring KiKi home only…

We saw KiKi’s picture on the ASH Animal Rescue website on Friday. It’s too soon, we said. Leica will get better, we said. We’ll get better, we said. It’ll be fine. Well that resolution lasted all of about two days before we called them. “Is KiKi the Dalmatian still there? OK, we’ll be there on…

We spent a few days looking into the condition that had taken Flash from us. Canine GDV (Gastric Dilation and Volvulus), or ‘Bloat’ as it is sometimes called is a condition which affects many dogs, in particular ‘deep-chested’ breeds such as Pinschers, but not so often Dalmatians. Despite having had Flash & Leica for all…

In the days immediately are Flash’s death Leica seems completely adrift. She searches endlessly for her sister. On our morning walks she scents every stone and tussock where Flash has been. She stops and stares in every direction, we imagine hoping to catch sight of her. Confused, forlorn and distressed. Unable to make sense of the…

We read a lot about animal behaviour. Specifically about the effects of bereavement. It’s dangerous to apply human criteria obviously, to anthropomorphise. Still, we look at Leica and struggle with whether or not she really needs, or would benefit from, having a new companion. We talk to people in Dalmatian Welfare groups, at Rescue Centres….