You have slept on my feet every night for eleven years and I still pretend to mind. Thank you for all of it.
Margaret
Letters to my dog
Write a letter or note to a dog who’s made a difference in your life.
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You're the best dog in the world.
Alfie
When I lost my hearing I thought I had lost the house as well. No doorbell, no kettle, no one calling up the stairs. Then you arrived, and you tapped my leg with your paw, and led me to the front door like it was the most important job anyone had ever been given. You have taken me to the door, the cooker and the smoke alarm more times than I can count. You have taken me back to the shops, and to my sister's, and to the pub quiz, where you are no help at all but everybody likes you better than me. I used to apologise for myself all day long. I don't do that any more. People look at you first, and then they look at me and they smile, and we go from there. I don't know how to explain to a dog what it means to be given your life back, so I'll carry on doing it in sausages.
David
Nobody has ever called you that, not once, but your sister insisted on it when she was six. To the rest of us you are Reg, and you have eaten three of my slippers.
The Hughes family
It has been two years since you went and I still leave the back door open a little when it's warm. You walked every mile of the first year after Dad died with me. I don't think I'd have left the house otherwise. You never once asked me how I was doing, which was exactly what I needed.
Ruth
You pick up my keys. You pick up my phone. You pick up my dropped socks and then look at me as if I should be embarrassed, and I am. Before you, I waited for someone to come home. Now we just get on with it.
Sanjay
Thank you for the mud. I mean it.
Jo
My son didn't speak to anyone at school for most of Year 3. He spoke to you the first evening you came home, in the kitchen, when he thought I wasn't listening. He told you about the bus, and about a boy called Finley, and about a drawing of a shark. I stood in the hall and cried into a tea towel. You just kept wagging.
Claire and Ben
You were meant to be a farm dog and you have never once looked at a sheep. You look at the sofa. I respect it.
Old Tom
I was eighty-one when you came to me, and everybody said I was too old for a dog. You are nine now and I am ninety, and we walk to the post box every morning, whatever the weather, because you won't take no for an answer. My doctor says you are the best thing he ever prescribed, though he didn't.
Dorothy Whitfield-Armstrong
Best friend. Worst breath.
Callum
On bad days, when my legs won't do what they're told, you stand next to me and wait. You don't fuss. You don't look worried, which is more than I can say for everybody else. When I'm ready, we go. I hadn't realised how tired I was of being looked at like that until you came along and didn't.
Priya
You came to us as a foster for two weeks. That was in 2019. I think we can stop calling it that now.
Helen and Marcus
My anxiety used to decide where I went and who I saw. You don't know that. You just know there's a walk at seven and that I'm the one holding the lead, so out we go. Some mornings you are the only reason I open the curtains.
Anonymous, but she knows
Grandad said you were the only one who listened to his stories all the way through. We know now it was because he kept a biscuit in his cardigan pocket. We have kept the cardigan. You still check.
Emily, aged 12
Thank you for finding me at the bottom of the stairs that night, and for not leaving until somebody came. I will never again complain about the hair on the sofa. Well, I will. But I won't mean it.
Graham