Treasured Guilt ~ Five Photos/Five Stories 5

I was eight when our Dalmatian, Beauty, ‘fell pregnant.’ It was either an immaculate conception or a neighbouring dog, randy Brandy, scaled the 15ft wall that lay between them and had his way with her.

Randy Brandy was a big wire haired mixum-gatherum of a dog with a long square head and every conceivable shade of brown in his coat. Beauty was ‘beauty’ personified!

She had four pups, Freckles, Brutus, Tiny and Treasure. I was absolutely thrilled when they arrived but my parents were rather less enthralled and didn’t want Beauty getting worn out by them.

My little heart broke as one by one homes were found for the pups. Treasure was my favourite and I hoped against hope that I would be able to persuade Mother and Father to keep him.

(As I look at the photo of Beauty and Treasure which Father took, the fact that Treasure is a little blurred doesn’t escape me. Beauty was the apple of Father’s eye!)

Beauty and Treasure. Photo: Frank Tubridy

However, the terrible day dawned when Mother found a woman who wanted a gentle pup to give to her mother. We were living in Castleblayney, Co. Monaghan and the new owner was based in Dublin which seemed to be at the other end of the earth to me.

Collection was arranged for a Friday evening in deepest November and the kind lady, knowing of my upset, handed me a book token for the huge sum of £1 when she arrived to take Treasure away. (At that stage, £1 was worth about a year’s pocket money to me.)

At around 10pm that night, the telephone rang and it was the rather distraught daughter phoning from Dublin to say that Treasure wouldn’t get out of her car and that she would be bringing him straight back. Needless to say, I was thrilled. ( I’ve often wondered what really happened as it couldn’t have been that difficult to get a tiny pup out of the car.)

So, when I woke the next morning, Treasure was back with Beauty, back where he belonged!

A few weeks later, friends of ours who lived just a few miles away said that they would love to have Treasure. I realised, even then, that this was probably the best offer that was open as I would get to see him regularly and I knew he would be very well looked after. Even I could see that he was getting a bit much for Beauty.

Everything worked out great for Treasure and I did get to see him as often as I wanted.

However, I’ve lived with that book token on my conscience all these years. I know I should have given it back. I know, I know, I know … but I couldn’t resist all the Nancy Drew books and the doggy diary that I could buy with it.

***

I would like to thank Willow for nominating me for this Five Photos/Five Stories Challenge.

Here are the rules for the Challenge:

“Post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

My final nomination is Dale over at A Delectable Life