THE ROCK STAR TREATMENT
It was a cold frosty afternoon at Christmas time in 1977. My husband, Ron, took our two terriers, Nimble and Nipper, to the local woods for a walk. On arrival he removed their collars so they wouldn’t get trapped in the undergrowth. There were no roads nearby and the dogs knew every inch of the terrain.
As dusk approached, Nipper came running back but Nimble didn’t. Ron searched and searched, but he was nowhere to be found. As darkness fell, he came home to break the bad news.
We’d had Nimble 12 years and Ron, our sons, Roger and Michael, and I were heartbroken. We put on warm clothes and armed with torches went back to the woods. We searched until the early hours but to no avail.
Early next morning, Ron and the boys headed back to the woods, calling at nearby houses to see if there had been any sightings. No one had seen him. I stayed at home to phone local kennels and one lady told me a terrier had been knocked down not far from her home. The car hadn’t stopped but a following car had. They had asked where the nearest veterinary surgery was.
I phoned the vet’s, but because Nimble wasn’t wearing a collar (this was before microchipping) and was old, they had thought he might have been abandoned to accommodate a Christmas puppy! The rescuers asked if they could give him a home and the vet agreed.
We had no idea where he had been taken. The police took our phone number in case something turned up, but said it was highly unlikely. I was devastated but then the phone rang. The people who had taken Nimble had called the police as they felt someone might be missing him. I was elated!
That afternoon Ron and I set off for Buckinghamshire. When we got there, we went up a long drive towards a big mansion. We went in to discover Nimble was being treated like a king! The kind people who had found him were none other than rock star Rick Wakeman (of rock band Yes fame) and his then wife Rosaline. They had been returning from a concert in Birmingham the night before and had seen Nimble knocked down.
Our little terrier had a tyre mark on his head and had dislocated his pelvis, but our vet put it back in place.
We will always be grateful for what Rick and his wife did that night. Nimble lived for another six happy years.
Doreen Berry, Warwickshire.