My first memory of man's best friend was when I was four years old and sitting in a cargo plane that had flown supplies into Berlin during the 1948/49 Blockade, been unloaded and then flew evacuees back to West Germany.
Across from us sat a woman holding a shopping bag with a tiny dachs-hund inside. The image of that dog has stayed with me all my life.
Years later, in West Germany, I would bring home any stray dog I could find, only to be told to take it straight back to where I had found it as we lived in a tiny walk-up flat barely big enough for our parents and us five children, let alone a dog.
Fast forward to 1973 when I lived in Honiara in the then British Solomon Islands Protectorate and an expatriate lady in the office was about to return to Australia. Knowing how much I loved dogs, she asked me if I would take care of her very old German Shepherd which I did, but, despite my spending many long nights and every weekend with him, he died within months, probably of a broken heart.
Rangoon in Burma had many skinny 'pagoda dogs' but I only kept a rabbit which, I suspect, was eaten by my domestic staff after I had left.
On Thursday Island in 1977 I inherited 'Snoopy' who spent more time chasing seagulls on the beach than being at home with me.
When living in Samoa, I fed several stray dogs who came to the house every night. They must've felt safer with me as Samoans still eat dogs.
In Georgetown on Penang Island a cat adopted me and slept on the window sill every night, while several years later in Townsville a beautiful Golden Labrador spent more time sitting next to me watching television than responding to calls from his owners down the road.
Then came Saudi Arabia where Muslims regard dogs as 'unclean' which meant that the few dogs that had been 'set free' rather than being given a dignified death by their departing expatriate owners were a much persecuted and sorry-looking lot.
And that was that until 2002 when Malty joined us and a year later Rover came into our lives. Both stole our hearts so completely that we will probably never have another dog again. Is that what Alfred Lord Tennyson meant when he penned those immortal words, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" ?
