Susie was my dog.  Not that this was planned, but it was how it turned out.

One day, not too long after Paddy died, a car came along the road slowly, a man driving and a worried-looking black labrador- type dog in the back, peering out of the window. I knew at once that she would come and live with us.  I was on my way out to see a friend (yes, shy and solitary as I was, I did have a few friends) and sure enough, on my return Susie was already settling in.

It was another sad story, she was a loved pet but the mother of the family had cancer and her husband was struggling to cope with their four children as well as look after her, and a young dog was too much.  He had contacted the RSPCA and been given our address.  I don’t think he’d come by arrangement with us, my mother wouldn’t have kept it as a surprise but just told me.

Just to keep you abreast of the passage of time, Bobby died when I was 5 1/2 and I would have been in my early teens when Susie came to us.  It was summertime, probably just before my 14th birthday, and my father had just bought a caravan, rather against the wishes of my mother.  He thought it would be jolly and spontaneous to move on day by day but she just saw work and disruption – actually, this holiday makes a post in itself, because it was rather a disaster, if not to me.

My sister was at college and due home for the holidays.  Mummy had asked what she would like for a welcome home dinner and she asked for Governor’s Mansion House Pot Roast.  This was a particularly delicious dish, of boned beef sirloin and the first thing to do was to brown the meat on all sides in a pan of fat.  Turning the joint, the fat splashed up and severely burnt her fingers.  She had to go to the doctor’s surgery to get it dressed and, inexplicably, he airily snipped away the blistered skin before bandaging the wound.  As you can imagine, she was in agony.  Her hand was bandaged, just leaving the fingertips peeping out.

The next day, she was driving to Beccles when a wasp got into the car.  Since disturbing a wasps’ nest as a child, she had been terrified of wasps and so she started flapping at the wasp and not concentrating on her driving.  We left the road on one of the Barnby Bends and hit a pile of sand that had been left there the previous winter for gritting purposes (it was never moved and has long since been grassed over and become part of the scenery), the wasp stung her on two of the poking-out fingers and flew away.  So we didn’t start the holiday in the best of circumstances.

We left the other dogs in the care of our gardener, but it was decided that, as Susie had only been with us a few days, we would take her with us.  She was a large dog and it was a 4-berth caravan, it wasn’t that roomy.  Also, we left a lot later than intended so only got about 30 miles down the road before deciding to stop for the night.  The next day we carried on and reached Yorkshire.

I had a lovely holiday, mainly because I left my parents to it and went out exploring with Susie.  The weather was hot, it was peaceful with beautiful scenery and we wandered for hours, building up a loving bond between us.  It was so different from Suffolk of course, with the hills and quarries, the drystone walls, the sheep wandering about, the far views.  Things were rather different back at the caravan, where my parents mostly rowed.  As in quarrelled, it was not a boating holiday.

My mother was in a filthy temper for all that holiday and it would be very easy to blame her for all the disagreements, but at least some of it was understandable.  My father wasn’t that practical.  He’d been out in the kitchen garden picking a whole lot of produce and brought the pressure cooker so that he could cook large meals.  He’d brought a gramophone, lots of board games – poor Daddy thought it was going to be a wonderful, bonding holiday for us all where we would have simple fun.  But my mother was no longer into simple fun, she preferred more sophistication.  And if Daddy cooked a meal, she got the job of clearing up which was bad enough at home.  And she was in pain the whole time, felt quite claustrophobic in the little caravan and found the business of having to unfold beds and tables every day a thorough nuisance, especially with a bad hand.  I remember one particularly bad quarrel, when Susie started to shake with fear.  I put my arm round her and whispered reassuringly that it was all right – my mother turned on me and shouted that IT WAS NOT ALL RIGHT.  It wasn’t surprising that the dog and I turned to each other.  I was quite able to disengage, I spent the days out roaming and the evenings reading, the rows were nothing to do with me and I switched off from them.

More about Susie to come.  And later, pictures of shoes.

Jess just turned up one day. There she was, out in the garden with the others.  She was very pleased to see us and even happier to be stroked.  She was the most affectionate dog, quite needy really, no amount of petting was quite enough for her.  After her first visit she spent most of her time here, only going home at night.  We’d made enquiries of course, she belonged to people in the next road – or rather, she belonged to their son but for some reason he couldn’t have her to live with him any more and his parents were taking care of her.

After a few weeks, Dr and Mrs Gee came round for a drink – other people would have been there too, just a regular pre-lunch Sunday get-together, and they apologised.  “We hope that Jess isn’t being a nuisance, we haven’t the sort of garden where we can keep her in and she hates being shut up all day.”  My mother assured her that it wasn’t a nuisance at all, she was a lovely little dog.  “We’re looking for a good home for her, actually.”  “Well, we’re a good home…”  So Jess wasn’t taken back that night and she stayed with us for the rest of her long life: she lived to 17.  Once Richard, her erstwhile owner, came round to take her out for a walk, I don’t suppose he had been very pleased that his pet had been given away.  I answered the door to him, certainly Jess was thrilled to see him and greeted him lovingly, but I don’t remember that she pined at all when he went away.

She was a medium sized dog, a Welsh border collie mixed with I’m not sure what.  I don’t have any photos of her to hand, but this one is not unlike (I think it’s the kind eyes and sweet expression that makes it so) except that her colouring was black, brown and white.  She was a pretty little thing with long soft hair that tangled terribly.  If she wasn’t groomed frequently she used to get quite matted and it wasn’t unusual to have to take scissors to the ‘feathers’ on her back legs.

Dear little Jess, I think she was rather taken for granted.  She was never any trouble, never made any demands.  When there were puppies in the house she was an indulgent auntie, but she reserved most of her affection for people.  Not one person in particular, anyone who was kind to her was instantly loved.  Her little fetish was licking feet.  If anyone went barefoot then she was there the moment one sat down, licking lovingly.  A child didn’t think this was odd, just funny, especially when she licked between my toes and tickled, but now I look back it was quite unusual that it was taken for granted and not severely discouraged.  I think that she was so hopefully eager to please that no one could quite bring themselves to disappoint her.

Now I’ll go back a bit – we had Simon, Bess and Huckleberry and then Bess died so tragically, and then we were asked by the RSPCA to take in Paddy, a black Labrador cross – I can’t quite remember her background, but her owners needed a new home for her.  Paddy was a novelty to me: a well trained and obedient dog.  I remember telling her to come and go and sit and stand and wait – poor dog, she must have been puzzled but I had never known a dog do what was wanted, at my command, before.

We didn’t have poor Paddy long, because she developed a large lump sticking out of her bottom and the vet thought it was a cyst.  It wasn’t.  She went to have it removed, the vet found that she had a lot more tumours and phoned to suggest simply deepening her sleep.  She was a lovely dog, it was a sad end to a short but happy (except for my ordering her about) life.

The most memorable thing about Paddy was her swimming prowess.  She loved to swim.  She liked chasing ducks.  She would go down to the quay at the bottom of the garden and launch herself into the water after a duck that was peacefully swimming past.  It would head out to the middle of Oulton Broad and Paddy would follow it.  She swam faster than ducks and, by the time the middle of the Broad was reached, she would almost have it within her grasp – whereupon the duck would fly away and Paddy would turn and swim back.  In the summer there were a lot of boats on the river and we would hear cries of amazement as people noticed a dog swimming 50 yards or more offshore.

I don’t think I have a photo of Paddy, but here is the one of Simon, Bess, Huck, Kipper and Jess, who was one of the five black pups of Bess’s litter.  Someone asked if the rest of them were like the blond brothers except for colour.  Well, they were. Another pup went to someone else in the fishing business and he was called Bloater (yes, I know!  Not my name of choice).  I don’t know what the other three were called or who took them.  Jess is lying down at the front.  I know I’ve posted the picture of me, holding Bess, before.

Our dogs were thoroughly indulged.  In the house, they rarely drank water – bowls of milk were provided for them instead.  They would drink from the muddiest puddle outside, but turned up their noses at a bowl of clean water.  After our au pairs, my parents had a live-in Spanish maid for a while – they came via an agency.  First we had Dolores, then Maria, then another Maria, who was the only professional, the other two being middle-aged housewives who were going abroad for a while to work and earn some capital for their family.

Dolores came to us at the start of winter, shivering in a summer dress and thin coat.  My mother took her straight out and equipped her with suitable clothes.  None of us spoke Spanish, but it’s surprising how far a basic dictionary and sign language goes.  My mother ended up speaking fairly fluent but completely ungrammatical (so she said, I don’t remember) Spanish.  When Dolores arrived and found there were several dogs in the house, she was shocked.  “In Spain, we throw knives at dogs!” she said.

A few weeks later, my mother found her crouched on the kitchen floor holding a bowl, at which Simon was lapping daintily.  “Salma doesn’t like cold milk from the floor,” she explained.  She’d taken the top of the milk (the creamy Jersey milk at that), warmed it in a pan and was holding it for him to drink at a comfortable height.  That was the power that Simon held.

Of course, there was no question that we would give the dogs tinned food.  It was cooked for them freshly, meat and vegetables, then mixed with biscuit.  Actually, I used to do that sometimes for my dogs too.  They liked it far better.

Simon listened to every conversation and understood a lot of what he heard.  He noticed, too.  So if my mother went upstairs to get changed, he’d deduce that she was going out and position himself at the door ready to shoot out the moment it was opened a chink so that he’d get a ride in the car (as I said the other day, he’d chase the car for a ride and there was nothing to be done about that, so either he wasn’t let out or he was taken along).  There were various key words that got an instant reaction – walk, milk, car, out and so on.  Because he out-thought us so often, we started saying those words in French.  So he learned them in French.  Then in Dutch and Spanish.  Then we started to spell them out.  He learnt that too.

He was a remarkably dignified dog and acutely aware of himself – honestly loves, I’m not kidding, nor exaggerating.  I have never known this in another dog, not to anything like the same extent.  The worst insult you could give was “you smell.”  He’d stalk straight out of the room and no amount of pleading would make him forgive you, not for hours.  It could be true of course, he was all dog and loved to roll in something smelling dreadful.  The garden led down to the river and sometimes the dogs would find a dead fish, the stinkier the better.  This would lead to a bath, if you could catch him.  He didn’t enjoy the bath but he did love the grooming and preening that followed it.  He became more sensitive about the word as time went by and you couldn’t innocently use the word ‘smell’ in conversation without him getting huffy.  “Sorry Simon, not you, you’re lovely”.

Once, he got shut in the downstairs loo.  Of course, what I said earlier about them not drinking water in the house was wrong.  I should have said that they (I’m talking male dogs here of course, the girls never did such a thing) drank plenty of water in the house, as long as it was out of the lavatory.  Our toilet seats didn’t have lids.  They were the original wooden ones from when the house was built in 1913.  And I’m sure you realise by now that there was little chance of us remembering to shut the toilet door.   Anyway, it was a joke.  Simon was engrossed in lapping away and my mother quietly shut the door, meaning to go back in a minute and let him out.  But something happened to distract her and she forgot and it wasn’t for quite some time that she noticed he wasn’t around and ran to let him out.  He stalked into the cloakroom, a look of thunder on his face and wouldn’t speak to her for hours.