Prologue

In the beginning, we had 2 family cats, Poppy and Billy. Poppy is a psychotic tortoise-shell, whom we had from just 7 weeks old and Billy is a charming and gentle ginger-tom we took in from the RSPCA, aged about 7yrs in 2004.

We had often spoke about getting a dog, but could never quite agree on what size, nevermind breed, of dog to go for. My then partner was big-dog mad and wanted a German Shepherd, or something similar. I always wanted a Sheltie, mainly because my sister had one some years back that I completely fell in love with.

Well, one day, we were messing about looking at information about rescue dogs in the papers and on the internet and the Sheltie debate still wasn't working, despite the fact that we'd seen some real beauts on a recent holiday and at the County Show. My mind must have just gone a bit tangential for a moment and I started thinking about what other breeds I had longed for and heard about as a child. I had never owned a dog so this was quite a challenge, but deep in the darkest recesses there were recollections of tales about dogs that could carry eggs in their mouths without breaking them. They would bring back anything you set them after, almost like an auto-boomerang service for dog toys.

No more than a day had passed since we decided to go for a Golden than we saw an ad for 2 pups in Staffordshire, about an hour away from where we live.