I WANTED THEM TO KNOW LOVE AGAIN
For months this gorgeous pair languished in kennels, after their owner died, with no one showing the slightest bit of interest in them because of their ages.
Then Marie Binstead visited them at the Last Chance Animal rescue Centre in Kent.
‘It was awful — staff told me no one had so much as stopped at their kennel,’ she remembers. ‘ So I walked them to help out, and returned to do it a few weeks later.
‘When I went to leave that second time, Toby just clung to me. He barked and he’s not a barker — he didn’t want me to go.
‘It was then I knew I had to have them — I couldn’t let them die without knowing an owner’s love again.’
Marie, 67, and husband Alan, 58, did have concerns about taking on lurcher- cross Sacha and terriercross Toby at their Hampshire home. ‘We’d had rescues all our lives,’ she says, ‘but much smaller ones, so we were out of our comfort zone. We’d just downsized to a bungalow and suddenly we had two dog beds taking up the sitting room!
‘But their natures are so soft and gentle. Sacha will come up and plonk her head on your lap as if to say “please, I need a hug”, then Toby will keep giving me his paw as if to say “I need one as well”.’