Tuppy
When Aischa died she left a great gap in our life which we wanted to fill. Not to replace Aischa, which would not be possible because she was such a great little thing and gave us so much love and pleasure, but to fill the empty space she left behind. I suppose just like the empty nest syndrome when the children leave home.
I looked on the Internet and found a lot of puppies but because we will be leaving for France at the end of March we were very restricted in our choise. You cannot leave a young puppy overnight in a (still) strange car on the ferry and you cannot take any dogs into your cabin. We found out from Aischa and Krümmel that the kennels on the ferries are very stressful, even more so than being left in a car they knew. Also, because we are travelling a lot by car, I did not want a large Yorkshire terrier, not more than 3 kg when fully grown and it had to be a bitch. So when I found this ad about a 2 year old Yorkshire terrier bitch in Leeds, we called to find out why they had to get rid of the dog and were told by the son that it was his mother's dog. His mother was 85 years old and had been in and out of hospital since Christmas and he did not have the time to look after the dog.
The next day we went to Leeds to have a look. As Leeds is about a 3.5 hrs drive from where we are in the Scottish borders we set off early in the morning. It turned out to be an even longer drive than anticipated. We were stopped by the police just before the english border and told that there had been an accident further on and that the road would be closed for at least another 2 hours. We had to make a detour which put more than an hour onto our trip but I did enjoy it and saw an area I had not seen before - the Kielder water. A huge lake in beautiful surrounding but with mostly secondary roads!
With the help of my newly installed Tomtom on my iPad we reached the address in Leeds and saw the dog. A little beauty, very sweet tempered, still very playful, about the size of Aischa but a different colouring. There was no way that we would leave without this little treasure.
When we came home that evening and put her on the grass for a weewee I could foresee problems with long walks because her legs looked very short and I also thought that something had been done to her tail because I could not see it porperly. The next morning, however, she looked completely different and I realised that she was keeping her tail between her legs and crouches down when she is frightened.
That morning we took her for a longish walk around some fields and there was no problem of her not following or not wanting to walk. She loved it! Only when a particular scent was too strong she was more interested in that than in us. She took to walking like a duck to water. I don’t think she got a lot of proper walks up to now but was used to being a lapdog. She has a beautiful coat more silvery than Aischa and Krümmel had.
We took her to the vet yesterday where she got a thorough health checkup, part of the injections she needs, a microchip, etc., all she needs for cross border travelling.
She can jump higher than Aischa could and has no problems finding the best places for a nap in the house. She follows me all over. When I get up and think she is asleep she is already standing behind me. At the moment she is curled up behind my feet so that I have to be careful getting up-
