8 January 2024
I woke up thinking about Nina, a Dalmatian that my sister got for her 11th (I think) birthday. She was scatty, I think that's the best description. It was our job to take her for walks in the evening, up to the top of the road and down the hill to the brook at the bottom. Sometimes we would take her to the recreation ground, a mainly open grassed space with a number of football pitches and a children's play area. We rarely let her go free (off-lead) there, she always thought that coming back (or not) was some sort of game. We would let her off in the woods that we backed on to - as long as there was plenty of time.
It was the time she had pups that was the memory I woke up with. I can't remember how many she had, it may have been ten. There was a runt in her litter - all the others were a similar size, and we named them all. The runt was a lot smaller and was called 'Littely' (for obvious reasons). Us children, in our early teens perhaps, made far too much fuss of this tiny pup. So, its mother started trying to kill it. She would sit on it and prevent it from feeding. Mum changes her name - I don't remember what to, but it was enough to fool the dog into believing that the runt was gone.
We kept one of the pups - a male we called Monty. He was nominally my dog. That's a story for another time.
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