The First Picture

Scrap snuggles up to Chip on our visit to his birth home

In the beginning

It was my late wife, Chip, who chose Scrap. We had heard of a litter of Jack Russell puppies in Cheriton Fitzpaine, a nearby village, on the morning of 13 August last year. We went to look at a bitch, but Chip only had eyes for one of the dogs, who was even fuller of the terrier spirit than his sibs. If there had been any doubt that we would be getting a puppy — it was something we had decided rather quickly, as neither of us, despite our three previous dogs together, had ever homed a puppy — disappeared when we heard that the litter had been born on 27 May, our 30th anniversary.

We arranged for the puppy, renamed Scrap on the spot (largely because Chip had seized on a chance remark of mine that I thought it was a good name for a small dog and had alchemically transmuted it into the notion that I had a lifelong yearning for a puppy of that ilk), to be delivered later in the week, and went home via a pet shop where we spent out on a cage, bed, puppyfood, a collar and toys. Chip was so thrilled, and happy.

That evening, she had a stomach haemorrhage, which ushered in the last four weeks of her life. The cancer slowly stripped her spirit, but not before she had taken a degree of delight from the first puppy she had ever had, even though she knew she would never feel the joy of walking with him, of smiling benignly at his backside as he sashayed ahead, as she had with other dogs she had loved.

That, and other pleasures and occasional pain would be mine alone, and I conceived of this blog as being about that, but it is also, it appears, about Chip and the other dogs we shared – Toots, Sallywags and Kezzy.

Chip and Scrap