If I can’t find a rescue dog for Mrs U soon, it will be me who needs re-homing!

EVERY so often my conscience is stabbed by another letter from a reader, asking for an update on my efforts to acquire a new dog. The shameful truth is that I’ve made no progress at all.

I thought it would be so easy, yet the business of adopting a four-legged friend in Britain today is proving as complicated and intractable as the B-word — and almost as controversial.

The letters started coming in after a column I wrote on this page 16 months ago, declaring my determination to buy my long- suffering wife a West Highland terrier puppy for her 60th birthday.

She had been pining for another dog since the death, more than two years earlier, of our beloved Matilda, a Jack Russell/Springer spaniel cross, at the venerable age of 16 years and 11 months.

Even when I wrote that article, I was six months late for Mrs U’s birthday. Now her present is 22 months overdue. But I was right about one thing: I said that if I didn’t manage to get her a dog before Christmas that year, 2017, my name would be mud in the Utley household.

So it was that I threw myself on the mercy of the Mail’s readers, fondly imagining that at least one or two of you would know of a puppy in need of a loving home. Nothing prepared me for the torrents of abuse I received in reply to what I thought was an innocent inquiry. Dog lovers, I discovered, can get very angry indeed with people they deem unworthy to own a pet.

Whimsical

Yes, there were plenty of kind letters among the many dozens I received, singing the praises of Westies and wishing me every success in my search. But it’s the nasty letters I remember best.

Among them were several calling me a monster or an idiot, repeating the famous slogan, in capital letters: ‘A DOG IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS!’

I thought this more than a little unfair, since I’d made clear that we’d seen Matilda happily through 16 Christmases, taking her for walks every day of her long life, giving a healthy diet and all the love a dog could wish for. I was well aware that a dog is a full family member, a long-term commitment and not merely a whimsical gift.

But the great majority of my correspondents made a separate point — many of them politely, others markedly less so. They said it was very wrong of me even to consider buying a puppy, when rehoming charities are full of strays and rejected animals in desperate need of rescue.

Well, I understood their point. But the truth is that I’ve had a couple of unpleasant experiences with rescue dogs belonging to friends, and I’ve been slightly wary of them ever since. I think of one particular mongrel which yaps and snarls at all visitors to its owners’ house, before lunging for their legs. Twice it has drawn blood from Mrs U, while once it ripped the trousers of a suit I had bought only a couple of days before.

My friends thought this latter attack a terrific hoot, but I’m sorry to say that I failed to see the funny side.

Before I provoke further wrath from readers, I should spell out that it’s unfair to judge all rescue dogs by the aggressive behaviour of a few — and, yes, my attacker had almost certainly suffered ill treatment before it was rehomed (though, in my book, that doesn’t make its destruction of a £350 suit any more pardonable).

I know that my next postbag will be full of letters from owners testifying that their rescue dogs are the most affectionate animals I could hope to meet. But it’s surely not outrageous to suggest that at least some of the animals that turn up in rescue homes are there because their previous owners found them unmanageable.

Another reason for my reluctance to adopt a stray was a warning from friends that animal charities are incredibly picky when it comes to selecting which applicants they think fit for the honour. It was almost as tortuous a process as adopting a child, they said — and our nearest such charity, the famous Battersea Dogs and Cats Home (BDCH), was the choosiest and most demanding of the lot.

Vetting

I reckoned that while my wife and I were still working — full-time in my case, parttime in Mrs U’s — we wouldn’t stand a chance of clearing the vetting procedure. It would be no good pointing out at any given time, we had at least one resident twenty- something son loafing about at home, with nothing better to do than take a dog for a walk. Sons, after all, are inclined to leave the family nest. Even my lot.

So I put out more feelers among friends and relations all over the country, telling them to get in touch if they heard of a dog in need of a home. I had long given up hope of a Westie puppy.

Any breed would do, as long as it wasn’t so small as to be ridiculous, or so large as to yearn for the wide open spaces that suburban London’s parks cannot supply. Nor did I insist any longer on a puppy. I’d settle for any youngish dog, not old enough to be set in its ways. Well, the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, but still no luck. Then came my four-fifths retirement in December — which means I’m at home most of the time, and my wife is there when I’m not. I reckoned that now we would sail through even the most rigorous vetting. So I swallowed my reservations about a rescue dog, and a fortnight ago Mrs U and I presented ourselves at BDCH.

What can I say, except that everything we’d been warned about the charity’s pickiness proved true. Mrs U filled in a seemingly endless form about our circumstances, the nature of our premises, our preferences of breed and experience of dog ownership. Everything short of our religion or taste in music.

We were then interviewed at length by a nice young man, who despite his civility made us feel like defendants up before a magistrate, rather than dog-lovers keen to offer the comforts of our home to an animal in need of TLC.

Tricky

By some miracle, however, we were accepted as potential adopters and told to ring or email every day until the right match could be found.

All of which brings me to this week, when I thought that at last I’d found a dog to tick all our boxes, residing at Battersea’s branch in Brands Hatch, Kent.

Flo, a five-month-old Yorkie, needs a home without other pets or children, says the website. Tick, tick. She prefers the country or suburbs to the inner city. Tick. She needs her own garden. Tick. And an owner prepared to carry on her clicker training. Tick. What’s more, she is looking for experienced terrier owners. Yet another tick.

I fired off an email, and received this reply the following morning: ‘ Hi Tom, Thank you for your email regarding Flo, who can be a tricky little lady and not your “average” puppy.

‘From your application, I can see that you have a visiting one-year-old grandchild. Flo is easily overstimulated and finds it difficult to calm down, so she would be better suited to an adult-only household with no visiting children.’

In other words, the occasional visit from our grandson, no more than once a fortnight, was enough to sink our chances. So the hunt goes on — and my name at Utley Towers is still mud, and getting muddier by the day. Can nobody help?

Look, BDCH is a wonderful place, spotlessly clean and staffed by armies of animal lovers (as so it should be, with its massive income — from legacies, charity events, rehoming fees and investments — totalling to £40.1 million in 2017 alone). And, of course, I understand the importance of finding the right home for every animal.

But in this country where thousands of abandoned dogs are in need of homes, will I suffer yet more abuse if I suggest that such charities could do even more good if they weren’t quite so damnably pernickety about people who are willing to help?