When I saw Ralph in the animal shelter, he was the most sickly-looking puppy. He was small, with a terrible head injury and a lot of fleas. He was sitting in the back of a cage with a lot of other puppies and he just looked as if he was getting trampled on.
It was 1997 and I was in a deep depression. I guess I picked the dog that matched how I felt inside – trampled on, sad and alone. The vet said: “This dog is probably going to die,” but I was not going to give up on him. I started to take care of him around the clock, hand-feeding him and taking him into the vet to hydrate him with injections. The film The English Patient had come out and he reminded me of the convalescing character, played by Ralph Fiennes, which is how he got his name. I was his Juliette Binoche, nursing him back to health so that he could become the romantic hero he was always meant to be.
