My mother’s phone calls became stranger, but I couldn’t visit. A rescue dog helped me reach her

‘Even as a child I knew that animals were portals and metaphors,’ Carrie Tiffany writes. Her new novella, the Lady with the Dog, is out now, with illustrations by Noel McKenna. Illustration: Noel McKenna

My mother had been wanting a dog for years. She lived in Perth, on the other side of the country to her children and grandchildren who were all grown up. She had retired too early, had few interests, and didn’t get out much. She imagined a sleek little whippet curled up at her feet as she watched television. She imagined a pretty collar and a knitted coat. My stepfather was less keen. He stalled the dog issue for more than a year while he built a high fence around the property. Then there was a solar-powered, sliding electronic gate that took another six months of fine tuning. I would ring him up and berate him. “Please, why can’t you just get on with it. She wants a dog. Just get her a dog.”

What I didn’t know was that the forbidding fence he was building, the gate operated by keypad and code, wasn’t just to contain a dog. It was to contain my mother.