London - Georgie joined our family 12 years ago: a tiny ball of black fluff who sat calmly looking up at me with an almost quizzical look on her puppy face. “So there you are,” she seemed to say, when I went to collect her from the animal shelter. “Shall we go home now?”
This gentle Labrador-collie cross has been a constant part of our lives ever since. From sunrise to lights out, she’s been confidante, playmate, exercise partner, burglar alarm and security guard — and quite the most efficient vacuum cleaner imaginable when strategically placed under a toddler’s high chair at meal times.
There are so many things for which I am grateful to this wonderful dog, but mostly it’s for helping bring up my four children.
Now living on borrowed time, her aching old body is riddled with cancer and arthritis, leaving her limping slowly and malodorously towards the finish line. But nothing can take away the fact that Georgie has given my youngsters a magical childhood.
The youngest three — Leonard, 11, Jerry, nine, and Ottoline, six — have never known life without her, and the eldest, Raymond, now 17, struggles to remember one.
That’s why I was so moved by the picture of Prince George this weekend, as he stared, clearly besotted, at the Duke and Duchess’s beloved spaniel, Lupo, in their latest family portrait.
George adores him — of course he does. To an eight-month-old baby, a dog is infinitely more interesting than any human.
Baby George is about to embark on possibly one of the most enduring and memorable relationships of his life. He’ll never forget Lupo, his first dog, in the same way that my children will never forget their beloved companion, Georgie.
Like Lupo, Georgie’s arrival could not have been more streamlined into our children’s lives: I was pregnant with Leonard when we decided to get a dog. I wanted my eldest son Raymond, then five, to have something just for him. I had been a single parent with him for a while and I was concerned how he would react to a new sibling.
Then we saw the advert for some local puppies and the rest is history. We saw Georgie and we fell in love.
Georgie was with me when I gave birth to Leonard in a birthing pool in our lounge. I will never forget it: she lay on the sofa, watching me, licking my face as I gasped in pain.
Afterwards, tucked up in bed with my newborn son, it seemed right to allow Georgie to snuggle up next to us. Throughout the early mornings and late-night feeds of those early months that followed, whenever I got up to change Leonard’s nappy, Georgie would get up and pad along with me. While the rest of the house slumbered, I never felt alone.
She has done the same for every subsequent child, always beside me, always with the same routine, doing the rounds, checking every child’s room in turn to make sure they are all right, before settling back down to await the next time she’s needed.
Of course, I knew I had to be careful. There have been far too many horrific reports of dog attacks on young children for any parent to be complacent. When choosing a dog as a family pet, you must ensure you get the right breed and temperament, but Georgie never gave us a moment’s worry. Not one growl — ever.
As toddlers, the children would curl up with her in her basket. They’d play with her, pet her, stroke her, brush her fur. They’d sit for hours and whisper in her ear, telling her all their secrets and stories.
Memories of summer holidays for my children will all factor in Georgie: collectively, they must have spent months throwing a ball for her in the garden. Even when they were babies and just at that sitting-up stage and they could barely throw a ball, the game was enjoyed.
I can still see a small, round, baby Leonard, clad only in a nappy, lobbing the ball barely a few inches in front of himself for the dog to catch and drop back in his lap. He would chuckle away, deep baby chuckles, and clap his hands with excitement.
Who needed TV when there was this much fun to be had? If she wasn’t playing ball, Georgie was being dressed up in a variety of hats and clothes, or dragged around the garden by a lead to play ‘walking the dog’.
She has swum in the sea with the children, jumped into rivers, stood on her hind legs to dance with them. We have planned all our holidays around Georgie. She either comes with us, or a trusted friend dogsits. There have certainly been no kennels for her.
In return, she has been the most devoted family member. She has even saved the lives of at least two of the children.
When Jerry was a toddler, he managed to somehow get out of my mother’s back garden, through her apparently impenetrable gate. He walked on to the pavement next to the busy main road outside her house.
I was inside with my mother and the other children when I suddenly heard Georgie barking. I stopped what I was doing. I knew instantly that something was wrong. She was barking so madly and there was a different, panicky tone to it.
I ran outside and there she was, racing backwards and forwards next to the gate and leaping up at it although it was way too high for her to jump over. I ran out and there was Jerry. Thank goodness he was so busy staring at Georgie that he hadn’t stepped on to the road.
Then, when Ottoline was a baby, she crawled off for a nanosecond and, once again, I heard Georgie outside in my friend’s garden barking in a frenzied fashion. I ran outside and found Ottoline, pulling herself up the outside of the too-deep paddling pool, an inch from tipping in.
The paddling pool was behind a supposedly locked gate but someone had opened it without my friend knowing. Once again, Georgie was a life saver.
Georgie has also been Raymond’s companion and his faithful friend and, if she could speak, I think Georgie would say he was her closest pal.
Raymond used to walk her for hours after packing up a picnic, a bottle of water and a bowl for Georgie. He then started entering her into local dog shows, even though she is not a pedigree, and picked up quite a few rosettes, mainly for Best Family Dog.
Next came the dog agility competitions. Raymond would spend hours in the garden every evening, delighting in teaching Georgie to jump through old tyres and over poles balanced on garden seats. They even made it on to the podium together once, earning a rosette each for third place.
Georgie’s rosette days sadly came to an end a few years ago when her front paws started getting stiff with arthritis. She and Raymond still enjoy their walks together, although each one seems to get steadily shorter.
These days she is greying around her muzzle, her breath is heavy, her limbs even heavier and she spends a lot of time lying in her basket.
Nine-year-old Jerry often lies with her, cuddling her and kissing her. Georgie does what she always does, what she always has done. She gives his hand a little lick and then tries to roll on her back to have her stomach tickled, although the arthritis makes it a laborious process nowadays.
The children often sit and massage her shoulders for hours on end. They don’t mind the fact that she is getting increasingly smelly as she grows older. They still talk to her endlessly and she still “talks” back in her doggy whine, asking for breakfast or to go outside or for a walk.
They still stroke Georgie’s ears, help her up onto the sofa with her creaking hips. She’ll make a half-hearted attempt to chase a ball, although she can’t really can’t be bothered.
A few months ago, we found a hard lump on the back of her head. It’s inoperable cancer and it has spread. The vet explained this all to us very kindly and patiently and we have been devastated ever since. We didn’t expect her to be here much past Christmas, yet still she hangs on in there.
She has done everything anyone could possibly expect from a dog. She has shown “her” children constant affection, patience, kindness and unswerving loyalty.
The lessons they have learned from this wonderful dog are ones they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. I could not have hoped for a better teacher and, when she does finally go, we will be bereft but, also, happy and blessed to have had her for so long.
I can only hope Prince George and Lupo have such long and happy lives together. - Daily Mail