Had I been writing this a couple of weeks ago it would have been with one hand. My right arm was afflicted by a mysterious seizure, so that I was unable to stretch it or raise it and the smallest movement was painful. Yet there was no reason for this - no fall or pulled muscle. We were puzzled, until Kitty said, ‘Mum, it has to be Repetitive Stress Injury! It’s because you’re always carrying and cuddling Bonnie.’
Instinctively, I knew she was right. And that, almost overnight, I had turned into the kind of woman I’d always....well, smiled at, if not straightforwardly mocked. This change was wholly unplanned - after all, great loves always are. But the truth can’t be avoided. I - who prided myself on unsentimental common sense and loved cats for their absolute independence - was smitten by an extravagantly enormous passion for a significantly small pooch.
The story of how I met Bonnie the Maltese will, I promise, conjure the handkerchiefs from your pockets, but before I tell the touching tale I should explain that dogs and I have always had a wary relationship. I thought very hard before presenting my husband Jonathan with a beautiful black Labrador bitch, Billie, for his fiftieth birthday - because I’d have to look after her in his absence. In the event I found Billie a delight, and two years later added a Border Collie, Sam, to the household. These two are the kind of dogs every farm needs: handsome big hounds to see off unwanted visitors (like foxes) with their deep-throated vigilance.
But ladies’ lap dogs with their shrill yaps? The best ones I could think of were animated mops like Dougal in The Magic Roundabout, or handy footstools like those odd little stone creatures at the feet of effigies on medieval tombs. In real life I positively disliked small dogs. When I was a child my grandmother had a plump corgi with an uncertain temper. I walked it for her, but took no pleasure in the activity. Since then I could never understand what the Queen sees in the short-legged creatures.
When I first met her, my mother-in-law -to- be was inordinately fond (or so it seemed to me) of Pootsie, the dachshund who followed her everywhere, and it took all my powers of acting to be nice to the animal. My husband’s late aunts, Ollie and Jackie, lived in a small house in Dittisham on the River Dart with two toy poodles called Lavinia and Amanda Jane. They were sweet enough - but it seemed a touch sad to me that the dear ladies doted on the dogs like children, to the extent of sending cards in their names on birthdays.
The Norfolk Terriers belonging to my friend Lavender Patten became famous in Hong Kong - where everybody recognised Whiskey and Soda, the beloved pets of the Governor’s wife. Rumour had it they were sometimes even allowed to sleep on the gubernatorial bed. Once, helping her walk them on the Peak I experienced a surprising twinge of affection for the hairy pair, but I banished it. No, these still weren’t ‘proper’ dogs, no matter how much they might deserve the affection lavished on them by their delightful, elegant owner. In any case - a dog on a bed? Never!
I read of Geri Halliwell’s lonely passion for her ShihTzu, Harry - taking the dog everywhere and elevating it to a mixture of child and best friend. To me it was touching evidence of the singer’s amiable nuttiness. On the matter of petite pooches I was way off message. Even at the end of this May, when I went to San Francisco to interview the international beselling novelist Amy Tan for my current Radio 4 series, ‘Devout Sceptics’ I was both amused and amazed by the fact that she insisted on recording with her two tiny terriers on her lap. When my producer objected, very gently, because he could hear the pets breathing and snuffling, Amy’s response was cool: the dogs were essential. She could not function without them. And so the interview went on, dogs and all. But I smiled at such eccentricity. Who could become so obsessed by minuscule mutts?
But somebody was watching from the great Kennel Club in the sky, ready to serve my reckoning. At an arts committee meeting for the Royal United Hospital in Bath, I was surprised when one of the other members, a fund raiser for the Bath Cats’ and Dogs’ Home, arrived with the prettiest small dog I’d ever seen - a six month old Maltese bitch with black button eyes and nose and a silk-whisk of a tail. It seemed this exquisite creature had been taken in by the dog warden two days earlier - left tied to a tree in one of Bath’s parks. No, I said, impossible! Somebody must have had an appointment and rushed off, forgetting the pet. But the Home hadn’t received any calls. I picked her up and was overcome with compassion for the little unwanted animal, as light as a bird. I was told that if nobody came forward after seven days they would need to find an adopter for her. Then, as if from a great distance, I heard this soppy voice say, ‘Oh, I’d give her a home.’ And I realised it was mine.
The week passed and I thought of Bonnie (for so I had already named her, after my favourite singer Bonnie Raitt) every night. I told nobody of my lonely passion - least of all the husband who would surely pour cold water on the idea. Secretly I e-mailed the Home to confirm my intention, and telephoned on June 20th to discover not a soul had come forward to inquire about the pup, and so if I filled in the forms she was mine. Leaving the house at a run to collect her, I had no time to consider how bizarre this was. I wrote out a cheque to the Cats’ and Dogs’ Home, and brought Bonnie back - to the consternation of the other two dogs and three cats who line up each night at 6.30 for supper.
Looking at them all with renewed affection I thought of all the hundreds of dogs and cats received by RSPCA Homes each week; abandoned or simply no longer wanted by the people who bring them in. While I was collecting Bonnie I met a young couple handing over their enormous hound because he had lunged at a child, just once - but that’s enough. They were in tears, like the many people who give up their pets (usually dogs) in because of marriage breakups. This is an ever increasing number: a subtle ‘take’ on our unstable society. Then again, elderly people find they can’t cope with a dog any more....There are many good reasons to swell the numbers of any Cats’ and Dog’s Home, and at Bath they look after 3,000 animals a year at a cost of about £100 per animal per week. But to leave a vulnerable dog tied up in a public park, where any drunken yobbos could have used her as a football? There is no excuse for that.
The other day I whispered to Bonnie, ‘You were abandoned, taken to a Home, and then you woke up in paradise - you lucky little girl!’’ I would wish the same good fortune to all those other dogs and cats, but can’t adopt any more. Now I understand the RSPCA’s policy of trying to persuade people not to swell the coffers of rapacious puppy breeders, but to ‘rescue’ one of the many animals who languish in Homes nationwide - some of them there for years. As an indication of the numbers involved, last year the RSPCA rehomed 24,887 dogs and 44,007 cats nationwide.
A very big dog in a very small body, Bonnie has become an unlikely farm pet - happy with the rest of the menagerie, even though she tries to swing on the big dogs’ tails, and irritates the cats with her clear soprano yap. My erstwhile favourite, a pedigree Burmilla cat called Louis, sometimes looks as if he’d like to mince her into a tin of Cesar, but he copes. And every human who meets her adores the tiny snow-dog with impossibly short legs - especially the husband who was so very unenthusiastic when I broke the news of the new addition to the family.
And me? Well, I know it’s stupid, but I’m mad about the toy. Naturally she sleeps on our bed, and I dote on the wee watchdog - revelling in my own amiable nuttiness. I treat her as a mixture between child and best friend, her toys are all over the floor and she follows me everywhere, making me laugh, and transforming my life with her intelligence, courage and affection. At last I understand the love of small dogs - because in a few short weeks Bonnie has become absolutely essential to my life.
And I just know she’s going to pick out a really good card for my birthday.
(To find out about your nearest RSPCA Home, ring 08705 555 999.
Payment for this article has ben donated to Bath Cats’ and Dogs’ Home.)
