A week after my mum left my dad, we travelled more than 100 miles from the outskirts of London to collect Punky from a farm in Derbyshire.
It was late summer 2006 and I was about to turn 16. This was a time of Juicy Couture tracksuits, The Simple Life on TV, hot pink flip phones and designer dog breeds.
Puggles were particularly popular: a cross between a flat-faced pug and floppy-eared beagle, which supposedly solved the breathing issues of the former and the disobedience of the latter. We weren’t so lucky on the behavioural front.
Punky was the last puppy left in the litter: small, chunky and fawn-coloured, like a potato. The breeders sent me a picture of him sitting in a bed of fuchsias, which we printed with professional photo paper and put on the fridge.
I still have no idea why my dad agreed to get him. A decision driven by grief over the impending divorce, maybe? But we quickly discovered Punky was weird. While most dogs come with a bountiful energy and desperation to please, our dog was sulky and stubborn, almost cat-like in his aloofness. He destroyed the house within six months, ripping up the laminate flooring, peeing on the curtains and eating an entire sofa – a feat I remain impressed by to this day.
An expert escape artist, Punky would regularly dig his way out of the garden with Shawshank-like perseverance. He once made it across a dual carriageway and was found sniffing around an Indian restaurant by a dog warden, who charged £200 for collection. On another occasion, we got a call from the local police station where the officers commented on how cute he was, to which my exasperated dad responded: “Please, keep him.”
In many ways, he was the worst dog we ever had. Dog training classes achieved nothing and I soon realised I was too young and naive to handle the responsibility of such a naughty puppy. Still, we persevered – and oddly, his constant chaos became a much-needed distraction during one of the most turbulent times of my life.
I was doing my GCSEs, struggling with friendship fallouts and feeling as though my home life was crumbling around me. My nervous system aflame with uncertainties, I’d often cry on my bedroom floor and Punky would pull me back to the present; sitting up on his hind legs, all blubbery belly, demanding dinner.
There is a predictability to an animal’s needs – even the most nightmarish ones – that weaves a thread of stability through the emotional entropy of life. Some of my fondest memories are of walking him with my best friend after school, sorting through our adolescence-inflated thoughts and feeling a sense of peace with how everything was always unravelling in some way.
Punky died last year at the age of 16. He mellowed out a lot in his later years, although did develop an addiction to peeing on my step-mum’s kitchen plinths. When I think back to those difficult teenage years, now so long ago, I remember the Punky anecdotes more than the family turmoil. He taught me about finding peace – and hilarity – in the everyday. After all, when you find your dog eating knickers from the radiator for the 10th time, what can you do but laugh?
