Proof that Man’s best friend really CAN transform your life
As a hit BBC show celebrates the bond between dogs and their owners, the extraordinary — and utterly heartwarming — stories behind its four-legged stars
FOR months at a time, Ellie Sheedy didn’t step outside her house. The first-year art student would watch the world from her window, sending in her work by email and ordering anything she needed online.
The 19-year-old had become terrified of going out after a severe form of hayfever left her with an unsightly rash all over her face and body.
Self- consciousness spiralled into crippling social anxiety, leaving her isolated and unable to make friends with fellow students at Loughborough University.
Three years on, Ellie, now 22, is a confident, outgoing young woman in the second year of her training as a veterinary nurse.
It was not down to medication or therapy. Instead, Ellie puts her transformation down to Benny, a six-month- old mongrel stray she adopted from the streets of Romania.
The incredible bond between Ellie and Benny is one of the highlights of an utterly enchanting four-part series, Me And My Dog: The Ultimate Contest on BBC2 — the final episode is tomorrow night at 8pm.
The series sees eight dog-and-owner pairs put through a number of challenges, examining their relationship and seeing how far a dog will follow its owner.
These include paddle boarding together, trying to get their pet to perform tricks using just eye contact and even jumping into a freezing stream to collect balls.
There are tales of redemption, broken hearts mended and incredible friendships that have made the nation fall in love with the show’s doggy stars and their owners.
It has also provided a powerful insight into the minds of dogs and how they learn to communicate with us — turning on its head our preconceptions about the special relationship that Man and dog have enjoyed for more than 15,000 years.
In fact, we’re on a much more equal footing than anyone had ever thought. WhILE
just one canine will be crowned Top Dog, the series showed how dogs and humans can learn to communicate almost telepathically — and the bond can be as close as any human relationship.
Ellie, who lives in Ashton-inMakerfield near Wigan, puts her incredible bond with Benny down to the fact that they’d both been through some incredibly hard times.
‘Benny and I came back into the world together,’ she says. ‘he helped me as much as I helped him, because we were as broken as each other.
‘he’d been so traumatised by his experiences that he would hide under the table or shake with fear most of the time. Caring for him forced me to leave the house because I knew he needed socialising with other dogs and plenty of walks to bring him back.
‘I had to stop focusing on myself and thinking people were staring at me when I went out because I needed to be strong for him. I saved him from the shelter, but he saved me in so many other ways.
‘I gave him lots of support and we started to understand each other better. Soon, I could read his expressions — and he could read mine.
‘If I felt anxious, he’d sit on my lap and give me a little tilt of the head or a nudge with his nose and I’d focus on him again and forget my worries.’
happily for Ellie, thanks to a pioneering course of jabs, her allergies eventually cleared up. But rather than return to university, she decided to retrain as a veterinary nurse to help others like Benny.
The reason Benny was so traumatised was because of his cruel treatment in Romania, a country that has a huge problem with stray dogs.
It stems from the Ceausescu dictatorship of the Eighties, which forced people to move from the countryside into small apartment blocks. It meant that thousands of pet dogs were abandoned.
Today, their descendants are still living on the streets and are often so mistreated that UK charities such as Action Aid For Animals travel to the country regularly to save as many from inhumane dog pounds as possible.
‘Over there, dogs are seen as vermin,’ says Ellie. ‘Benny was found in a shelter that looked like a football pitch with a fence around it. Food would be thrown in and the dogs would fight for it.’ ThE
charity placed Benny with a foster family in the UK — and when Ellie saw his picture online, she knew that they were meant to be together.
On TV, their deep bond was demonstrated by a test of their communication skills. During filming in the Lake District, the dogs were asked to navigate a range of gates guided only by their owners’ eyes and body language.
Benny triumphed, showing a partnership with Ellie that goes beyond words.
however, while the little mongrel bravely had a go at standing on a paddle board during a race around a lake, he drew the line at following Ellie through a mud bath, opting to meet her on the other side instead.
‘he knows me so well. he knew I didn’t love being in the sticky mud, so he didn’t want to do it either,’ says Ellie.
Then there is Jake Ahmad, 38, a painter and decorator from Winchester, hants. Fans of the show were reduced to tears when it was revealed how his beloved labradoodle,
Monty, never lived to see the show televised.
Though he looked fit and well during filming, he died at the end of January from cancer of the spleen.
Like Ellie, Jake said Monty brought him through some tough times following the suicide of his girlfriend. ‘Monty spent almost ten years helping me get back on my feet.
‘He helped save my life. When I got his ashes, I put them on the sofa for a day because Monty was never allowed up there when he was alive.
‘Looking back, I am just so grateful to have had him in my life. He was the most fun dog. He taught himself to ski by flipping his frisbee over, putting his two front paws inside and sliding along on it. He was such a dude.’
There are heart-in- themouth moments, too, when you realise just how raw dogs’ emotions can be. Josh Rice, 27, a project manager from Honiton, Devon, is shown looking almost tearful when he sees the terror in his dog Douglas’s eyes during a lake swimming challenge.
Dogs are great confidence boosters, too, and can provide solace in the most awkward of circumstances.
Jenni Routley, a 36-year-old web designer from Skipton, North Yorks, was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome in her mid-20s. The companion- ship of her two-year-old colliecocker-spaniel cross, Bodger, that helps keep her condition in check. He curbs the anxiety that causes her involuntary tics — in her case, often noises such as whistling.
Jenni says: ‘ People don’t dwell on my condition when I’m with Bodger — they are much more interested in stroking and fussing over her.’