7. Puppy Love.

On pets. And vets. A eulogy

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who begins anything with “it is a truth universally acknowledged” is a chateau-bottled crasher, but it has to be acknowledged that a middle-aged woman in possession of three children, two houses and one husband who won’t let her have any more children must be in want of a dog.

When a mother gets a dog, I always think that this marks the hard stop in her breeding schedule. I had my last child in 1996. After we bought a place on my father’s hill-farm in 2000, I’d scour the notices pinned in the various post offices-cum-stores across Exmoor in an avid trance.

If we got a puppy, I reasoned, as I studied a blurry Kodak snap of a Cadbury-coated Labrador gun-dog’s melting mega-litter, I’d stop wanting another baby. The children would sally forth into the great outdoors without complaint at the word walkies.

Our love of the dog would carry us through the ups and downs of family life and render the five-hour schlep from London to Exmoor, to an unimproved farmhouse sans TV, central heating, mod cons or other entertainments at the end of a two-mile unmade track, non-negotiable.

And then, driving down a steep hill outside Exford one day, STOP! I screeched, just past a five-bar gate. I’d spotted a tumble of black puppies romping in the yard.

Ivo slipped the surprised farmer 40 quid for the quietest black Lab-collie cross bitch and the children held the black bundle until we got a crate and all the other canine impedimenta in Dulverton. From that day, it was regime change. It was Dog First.

We had no idea, then, that we were not just getting a puppy from a neighbouring farmer. We were getting an Aeschylean, raiment-rending, full-fat family tragedy.

But first. Dog-ownership is not without its “challenges,” as we say now, and puppies are…”a lot.” Coco (all dogs were called Coco then, we discovered after we named her, and thinking we were terribly original) shredded our curtains. She chewed Ivo’s brogues. Then there was the time I’d gone mad and ordered new linen for the children’s bedrooms.

The very next day, Coco had “an accident” in the back of the Volvo, self-basted in the liquid muck, then ran into the house before I could catch her and rolled it off on the crisp, snowy beds fresh-dressed by the White Company.

Later, she came into Covent Garden with me every day for my editorshjp at The Lady. When I was booted upstairs on a six-figure salary, my only duty was penning a little snippet called “Coco’s Corner” for the esteemed gentlewoman’s weekly in the voice of the office dog. I like to think that Coco was for a time, pro rata, the highest paid columnist on Fleet Street.

We had her spayed in London by Notting Hill’s most charming vet, the gentlemanly Mr Carmichael. When we asked how the operation went he replied, “Well, I took out a lot of dog.” I always regretted it.

She was the politest member of the family. She always knew who was sad. She had perfect manners. Loved a stick. Never needed a lead.

She even died with tact – if not perfect timing. In 2015 we were driving to Exmoor for Christmas in two cars. Ivo had Coco and our daughter, and went first on the M4. I had the boys, and chose the scenic route.

They were hungry so I turned off the A303 half way through Wessex to find a nice country pub. We ordered sandwiches at a hatch, thinking this would take minutes. It turned out the hatch was serving all the “seated customers” first and after three-quarters of an hour I suddenly knew we had to get back in the car. “Forget the sandwiches!” I snapped. “We have to go!” The boys looked at me in horror. “But I ordered a bacon brie baguette!” one whined. So we waited. We ran to the car, wolfing the sandwiches, and I pedal-to-the-metalled to Somerset. I knew I had to get there. I had all the presents in the back. And the turkey. We had another family arriving for Christmas.

But it wasn’t any of that.

When we pulled into the yard, everyone came out, including Coco, to greet us and help unload. My daughter told everyone about Coco’s swim in the Exe that afternoon (she’d been having seizures, she was knocking on). Coco gave us, the new arrivals, a waggy greeting then she headed back into the house, with odd purpose.

She went through the ground floor to the Christmas tree in the hall and lay down under it. My daughter Charlotte – who loved Coco most of all, here is one of her drawings she did after she died, from memory– followed her. Then, about fifteen minutes later, she died in her arms.

We always said she waited until we had all arrived to go.

The whole family began howling desolately. A few hours later, the invited family - the Mates family who appear later on in this saga - arrived for their jolly country Christmas to find all five of us standing, bereft, our tears watering the open grave we’d dug for Coco in the garden in this drawing above, unable to speak.

I was reminded of this when reading George Northwood on what it feels like to lose his beloved Mimi, here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-162065818. He quotes Sarah Hoggan, a vet: “Many have told her - as if they are confessing a terrible secret - that they cried more when their pet died than when their Mum passed away.”

I wouldn’t say that in my case. But we were suspended in mourning for five years, a bardo that was only broken by Covid. Then, like a million other suckers as lockdown loomed, I thought: a dog. On March 2020 we picked up Coco’s replacement, a disobedient, mutinous apricot cockapoo I’d found online - from Radstock, Somerset.

This time, there were no illusions that she would be for the children, as they had flown the coop, which meant that cringey thing you and I shudder to behold in other pet-owners happened to us – she became our baby.

We don’t even try to hide it. “Who loves you more?” we empty nesters croon at the sheepy bundle, called Ziggy (all dogs are called Ziggy, now, inevitably). I am Mummy and Ivo is Daddy (just for context: not even our children call us “Mummy” and “Daddy”).

There’s no doubt. There’s been a vibe-shift when it comes to pet-ownership since my grandparents had seven working dogs, an inbred mix of collies and vicious terriers, on the farm.

The rationale behind this pivot to mushiness is this, I suppose. Our pets will only be with us for a portion of our lifetimes, but they are with us for the entirety of theirs, and this asymmetry means it is our bounden duty as “caregivers” to make sure they, not us, live their best life.

We sent our children to boarding school, but we pay for Cambridge graduates called Olivia to dog-sit Ziggy (when we go away. So she isn’t homesick.

I used to cut my children’s hair but Ziggy has a monthly wash, snip, and blow dry costing £70 at Yuppy Puppies in W11.

Ziggy got lots of attention from the start (she is a fluffy blonde) and I’m afraid when she was only a year or so old she had been paid “visits” by at least two dogs on the garden - a black spaniel and a Labrador - when we weren’t looking, and she also had a planned evening of passion with an elderly terrier when we were having dinner one night with the aforementioned Fiona and James Mates. Forget baby hunger, or a yearning for grandchildren - I wanted to have puppies, and regretted spaying Coco so she couldn’t.

A few weeks later we – as in Mrs Mates and I - went to Mr Carmichael to see if she was in pup. His surgery, on Addison Avenue, is a time capsule of ancient veterinarian tomes, giant insects in cases, Greek busts, etchings of lions, vitrines with curios, and basically looks more like a Victorian steampunk stage set than a clinical theatre.

Mr Carmichael passed a probe over Ziggy’s furry belly. Our eyes were glued to the screen. And there, in black and white, was the evidence. One pulsing sac after another. “We are a grandmother!” Fiona and I shrieked. Then we asked: “How many?” He said there were four, maybe more, and that the gestation period of a dog was 63 days.

Exactly 63 days after her night of passion at the Mates’ in Bayswater with Baxter I came downstairs after a bath and found Ziggy in her whelping pen, looking stunned, with a black shiny blob next to her. That was the beginning of a long night.

Over a period of five hours I found myself clamping cords, ripping puppies free from birth sacs and massaging them into life.

The last — a creamy fat blond boy — arrived at 1.15am, making four in total. They were divine. But what were they?

Mr Carmichael said he’d bet the farm they were Labrador. On that basis I put a notice on Instagram (@racheljohnsonpublic) and said I was selling all four to raise money for Parkinson’s UK.

At least one client thought they were getting a semi-Labrador puppy (hello Sebastian Scott and Peter Mikic!). We let them go at nine weeks, although I did go slightly mad after the puppies had all left and actually tried to kidnap one back from my publisher, when I worried that as both he and his wife had actual jobs they wouldn’t be able to devote themselves full time to Luna (pictured here, with Charlotte).

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After the puppies had gone to their homes it became clear (no expensive paternity test was needed although I did actually carry one out) that the puppies were half terrier, ie by old Bax. They looked just like the old boy.

After that, Mr Carmichael spayed Ziggy. She was one litter and done. It is still Dog First, though.

We use “our NHS” with gratitude but Ziggy has a private vet – in fact two - and has already had three surgeries costing more than a term’s school fees.

Her food cost almost as much as her hair until we discontinued her Butternut pouches of “aromatic lamb, lean turkey, juicy pork tender beef and succulent chicken” for posh kibble (it wasn’t the price so much as the constant chummy emails that I couldn’t stand). I could go on. Yes. I’m very much afraid we also discuss the consistency and frequency of her poos as if she is a newborn, often in public.

“Two nice big hard ones followed by a runny one,” runs a sample of our daily bulletins, and any updates on grass-chewing or bottom-scooching (dog owners will know of what I speak). If she has an upset tummy I make her scrambled eggs or rice. Even so, my friend Sasha Swire accuses me of not “feeding Ziggy with love” as she feeds Rocco, her cockapoo, on poached chicken breast and other delicacies.

The tech bros know the way to our pockets is via our pets so we get endless posts on our “feeds” about Pappy the Poodle who walks on his hind legs, green dental powder, and reels about great big fluffy double dog beds for smitten owners to sleep with their pets.

That level of co-dependence is always a possibility, I admit, if the grandchildren still fail to manifest. Needless to say Ziggy, who was supposed to never come upstairs now occupies our bed during the day. In fact, I’ve bought a dusky pink Welsh blanket from Melin Tregwynt for her added comfort.

When Mr Carmichael died, earlier this year, there was a service in St James, Norlands, where I had at least one of my children christened.

I wish I’d gone but I was away, so yesterday I went to the surgery to hear all about the occasion.

It turned out that hundreds of people came, almost all of them bringing to the church animals that Andrew Carmichael, who died in the saddle aged 86, after 50 years as a working vet, had looked after for the entirety of their lives and only a fraction of his.

“We had 250 dogs, and seven cats – one with three legs,” his assistant, Wendy, told me, when I popped in.

Then the telephone rang on the counter.

“Good afternoon, Mr Carmichael’s surgery,” she said, as she picked up the phone, and I have to say that salutation almost made me cry, but not quite as much as when a dog dies even in a film.

Note: all the writing here will be original to this platform, and I will disclose if anything is being re-published here. Puppy Love incorporates and extends my column in this week’s Spectator Magazine.