On the day of the break-up, I sat in my garden, crying and smoking, while Dennis, my terrier puppy, brought me tennis balls foraged from the bushes, dropping them at my feet. ‘Those are quite weird sticks she’s putting in her mouth,’ he presumably thought. ‘I’ll cheer her up with a manky old ball.’
I’d brought Dennis home three months earlier with my ex. We hadn’t been together that long when we started talking about a dog, only six months or so. But we were talking about forever, and children, and we’d both thought about a dog individually before meeting, so why not? We lay entwined in bed discussing options — a puppy? A rescue? A street dog from Romania — before I found a litter of Parson terrier puppies online, in a small town just outside Birmingham. They’re like big Jack Russells, Parson terriers —scrappy, loyal, funny, naughty little dogs. My mum has had two Parsons, and I knew instantly that I liked the look of a small boy from this litter, with dark brown and black markings on his back that looked like the world map.
