Living with the Dog Man

Living with the dog man for nearly fifty years has been quite a big experience and has taken me into many different locations and events such as looking after very badly injured animals, adopting a seriously disturbed hamster, a broody chicken sitting on a kitchen floor in the island of St Lucia and adopting many stray dogs at different times over the years. It started with a meeting at a very well run dog training club held twice a week at Sunbury on Thames, the trainers being Ken and Jan. At the time I was just starting out as a breeder of golden retrievers and on the way home from an indoor show in London, a friend and I stopped the car in order to give the dogs some exercise, when a nasty incident involving my first home bred dog called Flynn occurred. Our dogs were on leads when Flynn was viciously attacked by a large Labrador retriever that was off the lead. The owner’s way of dealing with this incident was to hit the dogs with his walking stick and walk away swearing profusely. Flynn had been bitten on his back leg and was barking furiously at the owner with the stick and it was all that we could do to get them apart. The result of this horrible incident left Flynn, who was only eight months old, with a reluctance to enter any show ring again and I needed to restore his confidence, hence the training classes in a controlled environment.

To my amazement, Flynn and I became quite good in the beginner class and the nature of the training gave Flynn back his confidence. Ray was a member of the main class and would turn up as we were finishing and we got into a conversation as his dog was also a golden retriever called Rufus. Now Rufus is a colour that is almost rusty red and I had to comment on the fact that his dog was the palest golden retriever that I had ever seen, which made us both laugh. At the end of the course, Flynn and I were awarded first prize and this lead Ken to invite us to join the club and start taking part in Obedience competitions. As my friend did not want to continue I was going to refuse as I did not drive but Ray stepped in and offered to pick me up twice a week so that I could continue.


When it came to actually going to the obedience shows, the arrangement was that he would drive and I would provide the food and navigate. This caused great amusement in the club as I found out that nobody would go with Ray as he had a reputation for turning up late to pick people up and driving extremely fast in order to be at the venue on time. After the first show, this became apparent and we made a deal that if I continued to provide more of the excellent lunches, he would make amends. I found out afterwards that as Ray lived alone in a bedsit, his meals were anything that the local chip shop could provide. Needless to say, this shop nearly went out of business when we got together.

On one occasion on the way to a show, we were driving down the road and to my dismay the car started to make a funny noise and began to shake. Ray stopped and got out of the car and said that we had a puncture. He told me to stay where I was until he had got the spare wheel out of the boot. Suddenly I saw the spare wheel rolling down the hill in front of us with Ray in hot pursuit until it reached the bottom and turned on its side and landed in the ditch. After he retrieved the wheel and used it to replace the punctured one I asked him in a somewhat stunned voice, what had happened and he said he was very sorry but he had changed the wheel the day before and had not tightened the nuts enough. I was somewhat shaken by the incident but was extremely glad that I had insisted that we set out at least half an hour earlier than he had suggested.

Another incident that happened during our early friendship concerned my navigation skills. On our way to a show, it was necessary to get onto the M1 motorway at Watford. Since this junction was still under construction there were several diversions in place and we followed as instructed. After passing Watford football stadium for the third time Ray calmly asked if I knew where we were going which resulted in having to pull up so that we could give vent to a bout of laughter. Life was like that with Ray then and nothing has changed since, nearly every adversity has been overcome with humour and understanding.