Getting woken up just before six by a stinky, mangy dog licking your face is as disgusting as it sounds. Once I’d recovered my senses enough to push him away and sit up, he gave me another wet nose-nudge for good measure, then hopped off the sofa.
‘Okay, okay. Are you hungry again?’ I yawned, looking for my phone to check the time. I flipped back the covers and swung my legs onto the wooden floor. Straight into a warm, yellow puddle.
Nesbit grinned up at me, pink tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
‘I don’t know about you, but I need a coffee.’
By the time the vet opened at eight, we’d shared a companionable breakfast of scrambled eggs, cleaned another puddle and he’d thankfully managed a poop on the lawn. Joan found us in the garden at seven thirty, and enthusiastically helped give Nesbit a bath.
Six sopping wet towels, a bathroom sprayed ceiling to skirting board in muddy water and a change of clothes later, Nesbit found time to wee one more time on the floor before Joan took him outside to try to teach him some manners.
I found her there a few minutes later. ‘The vet said to walk him down in about twenty minutes.’ Bigley Vets’ Surgery was located in the middle of the tiny shopping precinct, in between the bakery and the chemist, so a lead would be essential. I cobbled something together out of a fabric belt, tucked a couple of plastic bags in my pocket, and off we went, Joan letting Nesbit drag her down the road as far as the turning towards the primary school.
‘Promise you won’t let him go back to that murderer!’ she begged, before finally handing me the lead. ‘Or back to a nice owner who lost him, without me saying goodbye first!’
Promises assured, Nesbit and I went to find out what would happen next.
By the time Joan came bursting into the back garden at three forty-five demanding answers, I was able to provide nearly all of them. To her overdramatic relief, Nesbit wasn’t microchipped and there’d been no reports of missing cocker spaniel puppies. He was probably around five months old, and it said a lot about his background that he wasn’t yet housetrained and he was tiny for a male spaniel. The vet had treated him for fleas, ticks and worms, sorted vaccinations and prescribed some stinky lotion for a skin condition that I didn’t want to know the details of, along with precautionary antibiotics.
I’d printed off a poster to go on the vet’s notice-board, and shared it on the local pet lost and found social media pages, but the vet was fairly confident that no one would be coming forward to claim him.
‘He seems healthy apart from the flaky skin,’ I said, placing two cold drinks and a plate of flapjacks on my newly purchased garden table, safely out of reach of bad-mannered puppies.
‘You got him a collar!’ She squealed in delight, lifting him onto her lap. ‘With your address on! Does that mean we’re keeping him?’
I couldn’t help sharing in her glee. ‘For now. It’s illegal not to have a dog tag, and I thought my phone number was best. He’s chipped now, with my details on the system. If your mum agrees to let him move in with you, we can swap it to hers.’
Joan nodded, enthusiastically rubbing Nesbit’s tummy.
‘I’ve also got him a lead, dog food, bowls and some toys to hopefully stop him chewing the entire contents of my house.’
‘What about a bed?’
‘Yep.’
I had a feeling that the bed was the biggest waste of thirty pounds I’d ever spent, but you never knew – if I was keeping this dog then I needed to establish who was boss.
‘Oh, and I got these.’ I handed her a couple of books on owning a dog. ‘Essential reading if we’re going to get Nesbit properly trained up.’ I’d had more than a few pointed glances as we’d walked home, Nesbit continually darting into the road, tangling himself up in the lead and lunging at every living creature we passed, be it human, canine, a huge ginger tom cat or a tiny snail. I was clueless when it came to pets, and with Nesbit it was clear I’d taken on no easy challenge.
‘We should do puppy classes,’ Joan said, flicking through the book. ‘I’ll teach him how to fetch and roll over.’
‘Sounds great, but you might want to teach him to respect other people’s property first.’
As if on cue, he wriggled out of her grasp, leapt at her shoelaces and started tugging them with his tiny teeth.
‘This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ Joan declared. ‘Even better than when we ran away, or meeting you at the library.’
‘Oh, so I’m second to a stray furball now, am I?’
Joan looked at me out of the corner of one eye. ‘Well, duh!’
I sat at my lovely garden table catching up on emails while Joan cavorted about in the sunshine, distracting Nesbit from the holes in the hedge, the niggles about Leanne, Mum and Irene Jenkins all safely tucked in my mental in-tray for another day. For a couple of hours, this felt pretty darn close to the life I’d been dreaming about for so long.
By the time I went back inside to throw together some home-made turkey burgers, there was another note pushed through my door:
Please ensure all dog mess is removed from the lawn and disposed of.
Any chunterings about the rude presumption that I might not clear up after my dog dissolved when I got up the next morning and found a chicken-wire fence had been installed around the entire border of the garden, thwarting any doggy escapes.
Steph and Drew were back from their holiday and came straight over to have a nosy at how I was getting on. They brought paint brushes and rollers, God bless them, and Nicky arrived proudly brandishing the new toolbox that his brothers had given him as a flat-warming present.
‘Got any jobs need doing, Ollie, then I’m your man!’ he announced, eagerly glancing around in case anything presented itself.
‘Well, now that you mention it…’
‘Um, kettle on first, if you don’t mind,’ Steph interrupted, before getting nearly bowled over by a fluffy whirlwind. ‘What is that?’
‘You got a dog?’ Nicky cried, pushing past his sister to follow Nesbit back into the garden.
‘You got a dog?’ Steph echoed, eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘Dream List number nine.’ I shrugged.
‘Well, yeah, but I’d have thought items one to eight might take priority. Like, getting your house sorted so you can sleep in an actual bed, and work in your home office.’
‘Those things aren’t on the list,’ I replied airily. ‘And I didn’t plan to get a dog. If anything, he found me. I’ll fill you in while I make us a drink.’
‘Is this a sticker chart?’ she asked a few moments later, nose wrinkled in disbelief as she stood staring at the fridge . ‘For the dog? Blue sticker for a wee, red for a poo? Ollie, I’m not sure living alone is working out for you.’
I shrugged, laughing. ‘It’s for me, really. Nesbit’s accidents were driving me mad, so I thought a sticker chart might help me keep track of progress and feel less stressed about it.’
‘What do you get when he makes a full day without an accident? A Bonio?’