Sometimes a dog really can be just for Christmas after all

Date Published: {J}

They say a dog is for life – not just for Christmas – but once in a while, Christmas is as good as it gets.

We got a dog for Christmas this year, and last week we gave him away; not because we didn’t want him but because we couldn’t look after him and frankly he deserved to go to a better home.

Our Springer Spaniel was gorgeous; people stopped in the street to admire him like they do with new born babies and at times it was like pushing a buggy all over again. Dogs, like small children, make passers-by smile.

The boys called him Rolo for reasons best known to themselves, but, like their own names, as soon as it was suggested, it just fitted like a glove.

We got him on St Stephen’s Day and immediately walked the Prom with all the other dog owners whose ranks we had proudly joined. We’d never had a dog before and there was clearly so much to learn, but there seemed to be security in numbers.

We bought the basket, the toys, the food, the bowls, the collar and lead – from a standing start we had enough gear for a day out at Crufts.

Springers, as their name suggests, are lively lads who would eat their way through anything. Rolo made a fair stab and working his way through the garage door.

We tried to contain him in our small garden but – like they once said in a different context about Bill Clinton – he was a hard dog to keep on the porch.

We bought a dog fence whereby if he crossed it, he got a small shock via a collar on his neck. It frightened him so much that we hadn’t the heart to turn it on half the time. And then he came up with his own solution by chewing the plug to pieces when it was turned off.

We brought him down the Swamp and out the causeway to Mutton Island; we walked him out Salthill, to the NUIG grounds in Dangan where he ran like a creature born to the wild. We hadn’t walked this much since schooldays.

But work meant that Rolo was locked up for most of the day and that simply wasn’t fair. These dogs are meant to run, meant for the open countryside; they’re not couch potatoes.

And even as reality began to bite, you only had to look at him with those big eyes and brown ears and your heart melted. The kids loved him but their time with him was short in the evenings – and the long nights and icy roads don’t lend themselves to nocturnal walks.

In the end the person who’d wanted to buy him at the same time as ourselves was still prepared to have him; and he had the benefit of a rural setting, plenty of room, as well as another dog already on the land to play and run with.

We thought about holding on until the summer when the evenings would be longer, the weather would be better and somehow we’d have Rolo housetrained so that he didn’t produce more crap on a daily basis than Leinster House in a month.

But by then the ties that bind would be irreversibly formed and the option of giving him away to a more suitable home would no longer exist.

Those who’ve had dogs for years say that, when their pet dies, it’s like losing a member of the family – and even after three weeks as a dog owner, I can now appreciate just a little why that might be.

The hard truth is that we weren’t destined to be dog owners and we found that out the hard way; someone needs to be at home more regularly than we are, because lively Springers aren’t meant to spend their day in confinement.

That’s why Rolo is now hopefully enjoying the green fields of Clare, getting used to his new surroundings and family as he gets the sort of life a beautiful dog like him deserves.

We’re invited to visit but it would be like going back over old ground. Sometimes it’s best to make the hard decisions early for the right reasons, rather than prolong the agony and rob an animal of the room to roam he richly deserves.

For more, read page 13 of this week’s Connacht Tribune.