My mother was a great collector of animals. We already had at least one dog, a cat, ducks, a horse, a goat and a budgie when I think she saw someone wanting to give this puppy away and brought him home. I just fell in love with him. We were never quite sure what breed or cross he was, but he looked like a labrador had bred with an old English sheepdog – he was shaggy and very cute. That is why he was immediately named Teddy.
He had hair the same colour as mine. When the village fete held a pets-who-look-most-like-their-owners competition, my mum thought that Teddy and I looked so alike that we should enter. Being a teenager, I refused.
