Let me tell you about the biggest mistake I ever made. Her name is Maggie, she weighs 16 kilograms and she’s a rescue dog from the streets of Bosnia. Her curriculum vitae, if she had one, would be impressive at the gateway to Hell. This is a dog that has laid waste to Tunbridge Wells in her three years living with us: a car chaser, dog gnasher, child snarler, two-time doggy daycare reject, affirmed racist and aggressive believer that I should not, under any circumstances, be permitted to hug my own husband.
Like the singer and actress Lily Allen, who recently admitted having to return her lockdown rescue puppy, Mary, to the shelter, I have thought hard about giving my dog back. Allen, now based in New York, admitted last week on her Miss Me? podcast that the puppy had “ruined [her] life” because it chewed up her family’s passports, creating “an absolute logistical nightmare” — without their passports, her two children could not visit their father in the UK.
Later, after a backlash that included death threats for having ditched the dog, the singer clarified that the incident was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, revealing: “Passports weren’t the only thing she ate. She was a very badly behaved dog and I really tried very hard with her, but it just didn’t work out.”
The actress and singer Lily Allen received death threats after revealing she had given up her rescue dog, Mary
JOHNS PKI/SPLASH; INSTAGRAM
I can understand her decision. After all, my pooch seems to have done far more than Mary. Life with Maggie has necessitated near-constant diligence. For a full year, every time a car so much as entered her peripheral vision, I gave her a treat, in the hope that it would stop her from lunging at them. And it did cure her … eventually.
For a long time, all I felt was despair. Nobody could help me — not the near-constant conveyor belt of vets, behaviourists, trainers, physios, nutritionists or Facebook support groups — and two years in, despite my best efforts, my husband and I had turned into what felt like dog prison wardens. I started to wonder whether accepting defeat was my only option. By this point, local dog walkers had made a habit of crossing the road when they saw us in the street.
We got Maggie when she was five months old, a bundle of black-and-tan fur like a miniature German shepherd, with a ratty, misshapen tail that she took to wagging forlornly in exchange for treats. Her story was a heart-rending one: she had been thrown out of a moving car as a puppy in Bosnia, when she was so young that her eyes were still closed. The moment I saw her, I knew she was my dog.
A friend who I’d lived with at university had been fostering Maggie in Norfolk and posted on Facebook a request to find a permanent home. “House-trained”, “faithful, loving soulmate”, “not a barker”, said the advert. These weren’t untrue — at the time, when she was young and hadn’t yet fully acclimatised to her new surroundings, Maggie was a model student. When we met her, she was an angel. Fittingly, our application to adopt her was accepted on Christmas Day.
I still remember the first time, six months later, that she growled at another dog in the park. In that baffling moment, I couldn’t believe the sound had come from her. And the rest followed. She had strange pet peeves from her lack of early socialisation — among them picnics, hats, people standing still and, most mortifyingly of all, anyone who wasn’t white. When she was left alone, even for a few minutes, she would bark and howl mournfully, opening the floodgates of her bowels. Our hard-earned first house, a Victorian terrace we’d moved into months earlier, was trashed, the furniture eviscerated, the carpets a wasteland of bodily fluids.
Stephens used to give Maggie a treat “every time a car so much as entered her peripheral vision in the hope that it would stop her from lunging at them”
RACHEL ADAMS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
On the day when I was closest to getting rid of her, when my husband and I were exhausted, fighting about her in the remnants of our home, I decided to do the right thing and live with my mistake. Because, yes, she was a mistake, but I didn’t have it in me to let her down and have her yo-yo between what would no doubt become a series of unsuitable homes. Because who would want a dog like this? Not me — and not anyone else. And I’m so glad I stuck with her.
Progress has been slow. I have perfected the sheepish “she’s a rescue” smile, and what’s really helped has been accepting that, at heart, she will always be a street dog. We take things at her pace and shrug off her outbursts, of which there are fewer every day. Much of her bad behaviour, it turns out, was due to food intolerances and anxiety from what she has experienced. We cut out poultry, started her on probiotics and got a prescription for doggie Prozac. Now, finally, I almost have the dog I always wanted.
Maggie after Stephenson had owned her for a year. She still cannot be let off the lead so goes to private dog fields
Few things bring me more joy than Maggie. I love the way she full-body wags when I come home, casting her tail in an arc as wide as it’ll go and giving a guttural, sneezing groan that can only mean love. The way she leans into me with her full weight, presses her face into my shoulder, or gently places her slender, vulpine head into my outstretched hands. She now has another dog that genuinely enjoys her company in the park — a doberman called Rocks who is the size of a bear and frightens me with the intensity of a thousand suns whenever he’s let off the lead and pointed in my direction.
We still can’t let Maggie off the lead, so we pay a tenner a go to take her to private dog fields. And boy, can she run. When she reaches her top speed, throwing her head back in a celebration of muscle, joint and sinew, she spends most of those precious few moments in the air. And then it’s back to what she usually does these days: napping in the sun or on the sofa, with all four legs sticking up into the air.
She still has her moments, of course. The other day, she barked so loudly that the person walking behind us jumped with such ferocity that both their shoes went flying into the road. But she is Maggie: shit-eater, rabbit chaser, dog chastiser, ornamental lake swimmer, chaos incarnate. And she is, and for ever will be, mine.
Georgia Stephens is an editor at National Geographic Traveller
