JACK

I would like to tell you the story of Jack a Golden Labrador. He was a rescue dog that was originally owned by an ex-pat that lived in Ronda La Vieja. When she suddenly decided to move back to the UK, she had to try and re-house her SEVEN dogs, failing which they would have had to have been destroyed.

Alvaro, who was the builder of our house, heard of her plight and agreed to have Jack. To put your minds at rest, she was successful in finding good homes for the other six. At that time Alvaro already had three dogs, two German Shepherds, Gorky and Kira and Sally, a spirited Jack Russell.

Although Alvaro owned the house next to ours, he didn’t take up residency, so all four dogs lived together in the grounds of the house and whilst this wasn’t an ideal situation, it was better than being chained to a post 24 hours a day, which sadly is the case for many dogs here in Spain.

Anyway, within a year Gorky passed away and as you will probably remember from a previous blog, Sally decided to adopt us one day last year and has been living with us ever since, which just left Jack and Kira.

During the summer of last year Alvaro moved down to Malaga and only came to the house at weekends, so we agreed to feed the dogs for him during the week.

We had noticed that Kira had become quite poorly over recent months and Jack proved to be a wonderful companion to her; he was never far from Kira’s side and was clearly concerned for her. Every day I would put out two bowls of food for them, but due to her deteriorating condition, Kira would hardly eat anything, but Jack would never eat from her bowl, which is quite amazing.

We feared the worst and sadly, last Wednesday when we went up to feed them, we found that she had died at the back of the house, but thankfully it looked as if she had passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Poor Jack was now left on his own and he looked so upset and was obviously grieving the death of Kira. The next morning we heard him howling from first light, which was heartbreaking, so needless to say he spent the day with us.

We have since spoken to Alvaro and have agreed to have Jack with us every day while he is not there and take him back for the night and feed him at the same time.

Jack is such a loyal and loving dog; he never leaves your side and when we are in the house, he just waits outside on the patio until we come out! We have become so attached to him over the past week and if I am to be honest, I don't think it will be very long before we have another member of our ever-growing family.... Watch this space!!

Can I stay please...........