The Puppy That Came for Christmas (25 page)

Jamie grinned widely. “Oh, right. I'll take money from the capitalists any day! Spread the wealth and all that.” He grew serious as he pondered how much he could ask for without feeling cheeky. “Well, a hundred pounds would buy us a good number of leads and collars, maybe a few blankets . . . and then there's the food bills.” His face dropped at the thought of the endless bills Helper Dogs faced.

So it was settled.

 

“A hundred pounds, why not?” said Ian, nominating Helper Dogs on the form he'd been issued and scribbling the figure in the box. “It can never hurt to ask, and we know it's a good cause.”

He sealed the completed form in an envelope and took it with him to work the next morning, his last day in the office before his Christmas break.

On Christmas Eve we received a photo and some news about how Emma was getting on from Mike.

“Our partnership just goes from strength to strength, thanks to your efforts with her when she was a puppy,” he wrote. “We have settled into a good routine both at work and at home. Emma is in tip-top shape, very lean and muscular. I sometimes think I have created a monster, though, and she is constantly demanding exercise!”

The photo showed her looking trim and happy. It had been so hard giving her up, but it was worth it to see her so well and so loved. She was definitely where she belonged.

“And you're definitely where you belong,” I told Traffy, picking up her warm little body to give her a cuddle.

“Definitely, definitely, Lady Puppington,” Ian said.

Traffy had decided that when she dropped a toy off the sofa she should bark at Ian, and he should pick it up for her from the floor while she looked on. The first few times he'd laughed and done it—and she'd earned her nickname because she was so demanding and aristocratic. Then we'd realized we might be turning our little girl into a monster, a lazy dog that wouldn't lift a paw for herself. This was too much, even for devoted puppy parents like us, so we started applying a little more of the Helper Dogs discipline we'd learnt. Now she had to use her little stool to get off the sofa and pick up her toys for herself. It had worked for their pups, and we were sure it would work for ours.

 

That evening, I looked at her playing on the floor, caught up in some of the tinsel that I, feeling especially festive this year, had strewn around the room. Ian had never liked Christmas, and until Emma came along, he'd spent it out of the country, skiing or by a pool—as far away from his family as he could afford to go. When Emma had arrived the previous year, he'd canceled the holiday he'd organized for us on the slopes without a word of protest. That Christmas had been fantastic, and this year would be even better.

“Finally, we've got something really worth staying at home for,” he said.

I looked at the tree, the decorations, at Ian watching Christmas telly with Traffy, adorned with tinsel, worrying at his leg, and thought that there was nothing else I could want in the world.

I started Christmas morning by performing my now familiar Yuletide toilet supervision in the freezing 6 a.m. darkness. Traffy was delighted to be up and out as usual, snapping at the snow that had fallen overnight and snuffling around the transformed garden. Each day, Christmas or not, filled her with the wonder and joy of being alive. I remembered the Christmas before with Emma, and her being exactly the same, and I smiled at the memory. Puppies would always be puppies, but how different Ian and I were now. As soon as I could persuade Traffy in, I cleaned the muck off her paws, gave her a chew as a seasonal treat and took her upstairs with me, taking care to secure the guard at the top so she couldn't climb down again without my say so. Then I slipped back into the toasty bed next to Ian, placing Traffy on top of the duvet. She scrabbled around, made herself comfy in a hollow next to me, curled her tail around her nose and closed her eyes.

“We're not getting a puppy again next Christmas,” I said. “I want a lie-in next year.”

Ian grunted sleepily and smiled. For him, 6 a.m. was already a bit of a lie-in. I didn't feel he was taking my Christmas morning conversation seriously enough, so I planted my icy hands on his chest. That got his attention.

“Stop! Stop! That's enough,” he said, opening his eyes. “We won't have to get a puppy next Christmas. We'll have this one—and the Christmas after, and the one after, and the one after . . .”

That was better. I settled back into the warmth and closed my eyes.

 

A few hours later, we were outside again, properly dressed this time, with our lively little furball, Princess Puppington. She was still excited about the snow and kept sticking out her little tongue to taste it.

In a bid to calm her—or did I mean us?—down, we'd helped her open one of her presents, a soft pink duck, and she'd brought that out with her. The duck was almost as big as her and had startled her with the quacking sound it made when she bit it in the right place. She'd jumped back a couple of steps and surveyed it warily, then, deciding to assert her authority, jumped back into the fray, trying to find the sweet spot that produced the sound and looking very pleased with herself when she did so. Soon, I thought, she'd be meeting real ducks down by the river, and she'd be just as interested in them as she was in her toy one.

Ian got busy making the Christmas dinner and was in such a good mood he even let me put a CD of carols on. Last year it had been just the two of us and Emma; this year we were expecting my parents, my brother Jack, his partner Carmel and their little Maisie. Mid-morning, they presented themselves at the door with armfuls of presents.

“Hello, hello,” I said as I kissed them all. Ian shook hands with Jack and Dad and suffered my mum giving him a peck on the cheek, although he didn't look very comfortable.

Maisie looked completely different from when I'd seen her as a shriveled premature baby. Now she was a smiling, bonnie six-month-old. Jack and Carmel obviously totally adored her. Their miracle baby.

“At first we were always worrying about how fragile she was,” Carmel said. “I used to have nightmares that she wouldn't wake up.”

“And now she keeps us awake,” Jack joked.

“You did bring her milk in, didn't you?” Carmel said.

“Course.”

My mum and dad had visited them as often as they could during the early weeks when Maisie had first come home from the hospital. The midwife had visited often too, and within a few months Maisie was given the all clear.

Traffy was very interested in Maisie's toys, more so, even, than in the wrapping paper, as she could sense that everybody's attention was focused on them. Maisie smiled at Traffy and stretched her pudgy baby hands out to her and looked as if she'd like to play with Ducky in return. I smiled too. Maisie was gorgeous. We'd got her a yellow Labrador push-along toy, a child's walker with wheels and handles to hold on to. It was a little early, granted—at six months old she wasn't thinking about walking anywhere soon—but when I saw it I hadn't been able to resist. She'd have use for it soon, and in the meantime she could use it to help her balance and stand, and ride on while her proud dad pushed it around the room. It was also providing quite a distraction for Traffy, who was circling it with an air of circumspection on her face. On the plus side, it didn't bark back when she yapped at it, but on the minus side it was a fair bit bigger than her, and she wasn't at all sure about wheels instead of paws.

Ian emerged from the kitchen around 1 p.m. with the most fantastic Christmas dinner, the first one he'd ever made, and we let Traffy have a tiny sliver of turkey to celebrate her first Christmas with us. It was all so fun and new for her. With Emma and Freddy we'd been very strict and always given them the dry dog food provided, but with Traffy being our own pup we felt we could be a little more lenient, as long as we remained aware of how sensitive her puppy stomach was. It was all so new for us too. It felt as if we had a home, a family, to bring together, something complete—ours and ours alone—that we could rely on and build upon for the years ahead. Traffy loved the turkey, and in the months to come we found that we liked making food for her—usually chicken and rice with a few vegetables, but never onions as they can be toxic for dogs—more than giving her prepared food. We knew we were spoiling her, and that regular dog food and treats should have been good enough, but with chicken and rice as her staple she never became overweight and grew strong and healthy, with tons of energy.

Our first family Christmas all together was a day of happiness and treasured memories. Maisie adored Traffy, and Traffy was just fascinated by her. My mum looked on approvingly from the sofa over a slice of Ian's homemade Christmas cake. “My two beautiful granddaughters,” she said. Mum and Dad were to become huge fans of Traffy's too and were always ready to volunteer to look after her if we wanted to go away. They'd stay at our house and take Traffy for walks down by the river, marveling at all the wildlife they'd seen through their binoculars while Traffy waited patiently for them.

That night, after everyone had gone, we beached ourselves on the long red sofa and switched the TV on.

“That was the best family Christmas ever,” Ian said, and I smiled.

“Good.” I paused. “You know what ? I don't want anything more than this. I don't want to try for a baby, and I definitely don't want to have IVF, and I don't want to foster.”

The options, in their various ways, had caused so much heartache—and only promised future disappointments for me or anguish for Ian. I felt ready to leave them behind. I didn't regret for a minute trying each one and taking the path that had brought us to where we were, but now it was time to let go.

“I think you're right,” said Ian, drawing me close to him. “We have all the family we need now. I've got everything I could possibly want.”

I cleared up all the wrapping paper, the crackers and the party hats and, wrapping the turkey bones up tight to discourage foxes, put it all out in the dustbin, along with the vitamins and the minerals, the herbal supplements, the thermometers and the ovulation sticks, all the paraphernalia of pregnancy that had been supposed to help but finally hadn't made a difference.

It was dark outside. Ian put his arm around me while we watched Traffy, a tiny light shape in the white snow, as she barked and played with the glow-in-the-dark ball Ian's parents had bought for her.

“Next year we're taking her skiing with us,” Ian said.

 

Ian had some time off between Christmas and the New Year, so we relaxed and got to know our new pup. Traffy, we found out, was similar to Emma and Freddy in lots of ways, but completely her own dog in others. For instance, when Jo brought her daughter's dog to visit a few weeks after Christmas, Traffy shared her chew with her, something I'd never seen a dog do before. Traffy chewed on it for a little while, then Lulu had a go at it, and then it'd be Traffy's turn again. She also tried to share her chews with Ian, which I didn't think was quite so nice, but he didn't seem to mind.

One day, she found a toilet roll and rolled it down the stairs, in completely unself-conscious imitation of the Andrex puppies, and in exactly the same way as Emma and Freddy had, making me wonder if this was actually innate, genetically programmed behavior in Labradors and Golden Retrievers. Fortunately for us, each of them only did it the once—role-playing or exercising the stereotype, perhaps. And, just like Emma and Freddy, she liked being allowed on the bed. With Traffy, however, we put a little stool next to it, to encourage her.

The one thing Traffy really didn't like was cows. One day in the New Year, after she'd had her injections, we were walking past a field of cows with Traffy strolling along happily off her lead in front of us. When the cows saw Traffy, they all came running over to her. Traffy looked around, and even though there was a fence between her and them, she must have felt as if she was being chased by giants. She gave a yelp and ran away as fast as she could, disappearing around the bend. We ran after her, to find a fork in the track: two possible paths for Traffy and no sign of her at all. I ran down one, Ian the other. He found her hiding in a tunnel.