Christmas at Battersea: True Stories of Miracles and Hope by Battersea Dogs & Cats Home

Author:Battersea Dogs & Cats Home
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405919715
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

8. A Twist of Fate

The Charmer

Making my early-morning rounds of Battersea’s kennels, I came across a little white scruff of a dog. From the description on his kennel, I could see he was a Jack Russell cross and only four months old. Looking into his sad puppy-dog eyes, I felt a funny warm feeling spread out from my chest, down my arms and into my fingertips. I just knew Charlie was going to be my dog.

I was head of Intake and Assessment at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. Over the three years I’d spent working there, I’d seen hundreds of animals come and go, and every now and then, one would capture my heart. For months, I’d been thinking of looking for a feisty, hard-working Patterdale Terrier but now, seeing Charlie shaking and looking a bit sorry for himself, I was certain he belonged with me.

I introduced myself. Then he looked up at me with eyes that said, Get me out of here, Liz, and I was smitten.

Charlie had come in days earlier as a stray. He’d been found tied up near London City Airport, with a small empty food bowl beside him. Whoever had abandoned him had felt some responsibility towards him, but how anyone could abandon a puppy like that was beyond me. Luckily for Charlie, a passer-by had found him and kept him for a week before handing him in to us for rehoming.

I wanted to be the one who gave Charlie a new home but there was a problem. He was already earmarked as a possible working dog in our service dogs programme, which finds working homes for some of our animals with the right temperament to cope in such environments. They may become sniffer dogs and search for drugs, people, arms, cigarettes and cash. Charlie, however, seemed suitable for a trainer who worked with dogs in TV and film. It wasn’t ideal, given that I wanted him, but I took it on the chin. It was just one of those things. As he was a puppy, I volunteered to foster him at home until his seven ‘stray days’ were up, and he was officially the Home’s property, legally available for rehoming.

That night, Charlie came home to my flat and was no longer the shaky, nervous little dog I’d seen in the kennel. He was cocky, confident and strutted around like he owned the place.

It was impossible not to fall in love with his brattish personality, even if he was a handful at times. He was a lovable rogue with a bit of attitude, but I liked that. I took Charlie to work with me, and at the station he had a habit of finding food, a discarded chicken wing or some gum, to gobble up. He had the uncanny ability to spot something he considered edible at a hundred paces, and once he had it in his jaws, it was near impossible to get it out, so fast could he swallow it.

I resorted to using

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