AN UNCLE AND NIECE – BIG DOGS WITH BIG HEARTS

Red came to me with a lot of family history. She was part-husky, part-Newfoundland, part-Labrador, a big dog essentially designed for the North Pole. I’d had her uncle, Beaufort, for years and for a while his brother Baffin, too, before the pair of them – each 3ft high and weighing 100lb and with a propensity to fight each other – became too much and I’d reluctantly found Baffin a new home on a Scottish island.

Beaufort was gorgeous, proud, aloof and incredibly athletic. He ran like the wind and swam like an otter and could leap a five-bar gate without breaking stride. In his prime there was a purity of movement that never failed to thrill. But as he got older he began to slow and when he was ten we decided to overlap him with a puppy from the same background.

From the first Red was clumsy and overgrown but good-natured, with eyes buried in black hairy wrinkles that made her look adorable. She was, above all, the family dog, the one my children grew up with. She was similar to Nigel, in that she was loyal and gentle, yet perhaps not the sharpest knife in the box.

For such a big dog, she was a dainty eater who’d nibble at her food over two or three sessions. She was also an expert sleeper, snoozing 20 hours a day if you added in all the naps. And she was generous with it, happy for children, cats and other dogs to use her as a pillow and sleep with her.

Red’s arrival gave Beaufort a new lease of life and the pair of them ran and chased balls together for three years until, a tired old boy by then, Beaufort’s kidneys started to fail and he was put to sleep. I dug a hole in the coppice. It was March and the primroses and violets were flowering. The vet and I walked him slowly up the garden and he lay on a sheet by the grave. I stroked his head. Rest now old friend. Rest now.

Eight years later, Red joined him. Her heart was packing up, and one day I found her in the coppice, lying under the cherry tree next to Beaufort’s grave. It had taken all her strength to walk there. The vet came and injected her where she lay, and as I buried her, I wept. I loved her. We all did.

Despite the sadness at the end, most of us willingly share our lives with a dog. That’s because each one is special and each one individual, but the love is uncomplicated and common to all of us.

Monty with Red (left) and Beaufort in 1997