I love my 3 year old Cockapoo, Bailey, very much indeed. Having owned dogs before, for some reason Bailey is different to me and we have become best buddies. If I am having a bad day health-wise he is next to me and he pays me even more attention than usual. He is fun, boisterous and a typical Cockapoo. They don’t have dog personalities, they are humans in dog form, but crucially they are the best of humans.

He needed a friend, however, and so we spent some time looking for a companion. We chose Maggie, a Cavapoo who has lived on a puppy farm her whole life. She is 2 years old and has been pregnant for much of that time, but how could we say no.

How could we resist that 80’s hairstyle? It naturally grows like that and she is adorable. The problem was that when we put her in the cage for the trip home from the family fostering her for Many Tears Rescue, there was a huge scream from another Cavapoo who had sat quietly in the corner of the garden the entire time we were there checking if Bailey would get along with Maggie.

It was a heartbreaking sound and then Maggie did the same as she looked at the other Cavapoo. This other Cavapoo would come to be called Violet and she is with us today because we could not leave without them both.

They are both broken in the sense that neither has had a life. Violet is 3 years old and like Maggie has been pregnant more than once on the puppy farm, and they are still not at the stage where we can stroke them or cuddle them. We cannot take them for a walk yet and they find normal dog behaviours completely alien.

When we first got them they could not understand eating food from a bowl because it had always been thrown on the floor for them to eat. They were scared of hands and feet, I can only imagine why, and there was a sadness about them that was continually heartbreaking. It may be that Violet is Maggie’s mother because they sleep next to each other and are like two parts of the same dog.

Bailey is so gentle with them in a pretend kind of way. He growls when play fighting with Maggie and he pretends to bite her, but his mouth is always shut so he never hurts her. This is touching because he is twice the weight of both of them put together (they are only 6kg).

Violet continues to be the quiet one and they both jump at any noise, but tails wag when we return home, they don’t have accidents in the house and they will sit next to us. I have been surprised at how long it takes to rehabilitate rescue dogs, but I am hopeful that by Christmas we may have real contact and be able to prove to them that not every human is evil.

I hate that they, or any dog, have been treated badly and I don’t understand people who have so little empathy they cannot see the greatness in dogs. All we can do is give them the best life we can and I know that I will never buy another dog in the traditional way again when there are so many out there that deserve the chance of a better life.

Many Tears Animal Rescue

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