My own pets; Daisy, the agility dog

Many years before starting working as The Friendly Pet Nurse I volunteered for the Twinkle Trust, an animal aid charity that aims to help the many stray cats that live in Fuerteventura, one of the Canary Islands near Spain. Twinkle Trust helps feral and neglected cats on the island, and I was specifically there to help with sterilisation, thus helping the population. I would volunteer my skills to help neuter cats, working sometimes from dawn till dusk with an afternoon break in the hot sun. Two vets and a group of veterinary nurses would go out there for ten days. We would pay for our own flights whilst the trust would pay for shared accommodation. On this particular trip, some days we would neuter 30 cats! The charity sets up ‘cat cafes’ as a place for cats to get food and water safely and ‘cat catchers’ would then bring us cats to treat. The cat cafes also help group cats together rather than them going into hotels and people’s villa’s in search of food. Some cats would be sick or injured but our main role was to treat them, try to re-home them or release them in better health or neutered.

Stray pup from Spain

However on the third day, a cat trapper came back with a puppy, it had been following them about and they didn’t know what to do. They had asked various people on the beaches and hotels but no one seemed to know about the dog, so the charity took her in, as did we! I was sleeping on the sofa of the shared accommodation and the puppy would sleep with me. I named her Daisy and decided to keep her. During this time the ‘Pet Passport’ had just been introduced. I agreed to pay the cost of the passport along with the fabulous vets I had traveled with, but Daisy would need to be cared for and treated over a period of months before she could come to the UK with the relevant paperwork. So a worker at the charity agreed to this and 8 months later Daisy arrived at Gatwick as a cargo package to be picked up at 2 am!

Daisy, a mixed breed

I did get Daisy’s DNA tested to try and find out more about her. The results concluded she was ‘mixed, mixed and mixed with poodle and papillon’ so a proper Heinz 57 variety. Daisy got on really well with Harry as they both loved chasing rabbits and coming along with me horse riding. Later on in her life, I found she had a great flare for agility. We would do weekly classes involving jumping over hurdles, fences, weaving, and going through tunnels. I would enter Daisy in local competitions and she would do so well that I wish I had done it earlier with her as she was a natural at it! She lived till she was 15 years old, having been diagnosed with liver disease when she was 8. I have lots of memories of running around dog agility courses and my son remembers her fondly. After Daisy came our many cats, and that’s another story…