With Christmas comes the annual plea: don't give a puppy or a cat as a present without serious thought. They are precious responsibilities, not commodities.
Dog lovers will understand. They will also know an abandoned puppy is not just a seasonal occurrence - it happens all year round.
This particular Christmas dog story happened a few weeks early. Having run our dogs in the woods, we were going home, but heard frantic yelps. The six dogs stopped as one and looked. I put them in their trailer, then went back. Below the brambles and dead wood concealing a deep ditch, something was trying to clamber out of the undergrowth.
Down I went, slapped across the face by some thorny branches as my boot came under attack. A tiny puppy, thin but bright-eyed and determined to live, was pitching its case. On pulling her free, she proved to be a collie cross, about eight weeks old. Her brother was also in the ditch, dead.
There could have been more, but it was impossible to see through the dense brambles. The same old story - puppies left to die. But luck was with the little female who, within a couple of minutes had crawled in under my fleece jacket, her head burrowing deep.
So far so good. But I was going to an academic conference at Aarhus University, Denmark the next morning - and all the dogs and cats were going to a kennels for a few days. The puppy would have to go too. I stayed up all night with her, watching for signs of illness, but she seemed fine.
The kennel owners accepted the unexpected addition. We had an emergency plan if she became ill. She didn't. Back from Aarhus, I found all was well. The dogs - puppy included - climbed into their dog box and we set off for home. On the way, we stopped in Edenderry, Co Offaly. As we watched from a restaurant the little trailer attracted some attention.
Out on the road
At the approach to Rathangan, in Co Kildare, another driver overtook us and signalled us to stop. "Do you know your trailer door's open? And your dogs are out on the road?"
We were shocked. When did this happen? "On the start of the bog road, just beyond Edenderry, that's where I seen them." Some nine miles back. Why had he taken so long to alert us? The trailer door was swinging open. Only one dog, Holly Hobbit, a wire Dachshund, was still inside, having somehow kept her balance, and her nerve. Something had happened to the locking device, perhaps when the car was parked at Edenderry.
The bog road is dangerous at any time - for some reason many drivers disregard their suspensions, never mind human decency, and blast along it at more than 80 m.p.h. Even worse for our dogs, it was dark. We headed back. Mr daughter Nadia was screaming. I felt sick.
Gentle house pets catapulted out from a moving vehicle would have no hope falling onto the road and then contending with dangerous drivers. Holly was sitting quietly in the back seat with the two cats; all three seemed to know something horrible had happened.
On through the dark, and nothing for some five miles. How would Nadia react if the dogs were found dead? After six miles, we saw Mitzi, our powerful springer spaniel, trotting towards us. She joined the others in the back seat. Another 600 metres passed.
Badly cut
Then, there in the road, their eyes reflected in the headlights, were Nathan and his sister Loveheart, two collie setter crosses. Nathan's face was badly cut. Both were in shock but safe. But where was my Ashie, a resourceful border collie-terrier cross? And where was the puppy saved from death in the ditch only to meet with this disaster?
Nadia kept crying. I felt dizzy and looked into the darkness. There was Ashie, about 10 feet away, staring at me, shaking. I lifted her. But the puppy was missing. Nadia's practical father, who hadn't yet been told about the puppy, decided all was well and turned the car around. Back at the house, Nadia whispered: "I know she's alive, find her." Everyone went to bed, except me.
From about 9 p.m. until 5.30 a.m., I searched nine miles of bog road on foot, by bike and by car, calling 'puppy' into the night. It was freezing. I was too cold to be scared. So profound has been the influence of my beloved dogs, Bilbo and Frodo, that I can't desert any dog in trouble. I'd look until I found her. Every road sign, strange tree, lone house, the old scrapyard with the corrugated sheeting gates became markers; so did a roadside memorial to a man killed in an accident. Though the night was clear with a sky full of stars, a sporadic mist made the scene all the more ghostly as I flagged down speeding cars, asking drivers to keep a look out for a puppy. Everyone was kind; no one said, "Would you ever act your age?" The police joined the search.
At light, I was back out on the bog road. The Bord na Mona workers had been alerted. Up and down the road I went, calling "Puppy", stopping at houses, stopping cars, tractors. All through the morning, nothing. Still Nadia insisted, "She's alive, please keep on looking."
"She's alive"
Back into Rathangan village. The postmen, even an auctioneer, the local radio, the animal shelters - everyone had been alerted and everyone was so kind. Many people certainly love dogs. But by 2 p.m., with only two hours of light left, I was beginning to accept she was gone and reasoned with Nadia, "At least the others are safe." But still Nadia stressed, "She's alive."
Back out on the bog road, I again passed the roadside cross and the scrapyard, I'd noticed so many times. But now the gates were open. I walked in tentatively calling, "Hello, hello." Scratching and yelps came from an old shed. The puppy who had survived the ditch, the tumble on to the road and a freezing night on the bog ran to me. We call her Aarhus. She was lucky. So were we.