George

Sadly at the end of November both our very loving and faithful Dalmatians, Ben and Polly, had to be put down for health reasons. We were devastated. With Christmas looming we were keenly aware our dogs wouldn’t be with us to enjoy unwrapping presents and all the hilarity that usually entailed with 2 spotty dogs!

Our vet had told us ‘the dog will find you’ so we visited our local RSPCA centre four times and met some lovely dogs but they weren’t right for us. So that we wouldn’t be constantly reminded of our loss, we decided to have a different breed and chose a Sheltie puppy, who would be old enough to leave his mum towards the middle of January.

But that didn’t happen. A few days before Christmas Anne Gurnsey from Dalmatian Welfare phoned to ask me to help to a woman who had wanted a young male Dalmatian as a companion for her bitch. The dog had been with her for a day and she was finding it difficult to manage both dogs on her own, especially as the male was very excitable. I offered to collect him and keep him overnight until a foster home could be found.

As soon as I brought him home we all felt it was so right to have another Dalmatian and we decided to adopt him ourselves. We named him George and began basic training straight away. He’s made us very happy and it was so wonderful to have him join in the fun at Christmas.

A few days later whilst out on our night time walk he became very excited not just by the snow, but that he’d found something in the snow. He was doing play bows and bouncing round something that suddenly lit up. He’d found a mobile phone. When we got home we rang the numbers and found the owner, a boy who lived round the corner from us. He had dropped it in the snow and couldn’t find it.

Well done George for finding the boy’s phone, and also for finding our family, and rescuing us at a very sad and difficult time.