He Loves My Wife More Than Me – Five Years Of Woody

This weekend will be Woody’s Gotchya day…. His 5^th to be precise…. For those who don’t know, Woody is our rescue dog… maybe the title image gave it away.

Anyway, we got woody 5 years ago, and he is the bestest boy in the world! He is a rescue from Serbia, one of those strays imported/liberated by a charity. Balkan Underdogs to be exact.

In 2020 , like the rest of the country, I decided I wanted a dog, maybe it was a hangover from COVID but I wanted some company… I was living alone at this point and was after some one to talk to.

I could afford a puppy so I trawled through the various dog rescue charities, but none would accept me as a good potential dog owner, despite owning a Weimaraner 10 years previous… Not your average first dog, but I was still deemed not qualified enough to have a rescue, not an English one anyway…

As time went by I got myself a girlfriend, (now my wife), who shared my enthusiasm for getting a dog… She suggested a charity that rescued foreign strays and brought them over… Good idea I thought, like the employment market, if we can’t get British people to do it, we’ll get immigrants instead… thankfully she did all the leg work.  We then spent various evenings over a bottle of wine clicking through pictures of dogs like we were on Tinder, well, that’s how I imagine it to be, I’ve never been on… I’m also too high brow to make a joke.

Long story short we found one! A dog, a golden coated smiley chappy called Arthur, who lived in a pound in Serbia. We watched some videos and knew he was the pol for us.

Without any delay we expressed interest, passed the vigorous checks that were set out by Balkan Underdogs and awaited a “delivery date”. A delivery date that took forever to come!

Eventually we received a message with an itinerary of Arthur’s journey. We were instructed to collect him from Corley Service station on the M6 at a certain time.

We did as we was told and waited anxiously for the doggy transport to arrive… the vehicle pulled up, a guy asked our name, he went in the back, took out a fluffy unkempt hound and handed him to us, took a photo, gave us some documents and sped off down the slip road… It was well dodgy…

We got home and to celebrate he unloaded 4 days worth of wee all over the carpet… Which was nice of him… He’s a funny thing when it comes to the toilet He has to be… “in the mood….” Quite frustrating at times.

Anyway, we both agreed to change his name to Woody… It was perfect as I work with it and all he wanted to do was chew it!

A few weeks later we took him on our planned camping trip around Cornwall, he was an absolute boss, eating up the miles on the coastal paths and it soon became apparent he loved a pub.

He is the most perfect pub dog, he sits there quietly, watches the world go by and doesn’t make a sound, probably because he knows that there are usually treats…

We did almost lose him on that trip, somehow, he broke loose and made chase after a rabbit, a rabbit which headed, like a lemming, straight for the edge of a cliff!! We thought that was it, a month of dog ownership only to lose him to the Atlantic Ocean.

Since then we have only lost him once, just last Christmas, like before, chasing some poor unsuspecting prey, this time of the feathered variety, whilst making chase he somehow managed to get himself on the wrong side of the fence… so when I found him after an hour of searching and shouting he was sat, patiently waiting to be found.

Not a murmur of a bark or a whine to indicate his position or predicament, just patiently sat there, calmly waiting to be found…

And that sums Woody up perfectly, he is calm, gentle and loving, he loves women and women love him… He will run straight past me to greet my wife first… it’s fine Woods, I’m not bothered in the slightest.

He definitely loves her more though, if I arrive home without my wife he definitely has that expression which says, “oh, it’s only you…” I don’t mind though, because he looks after the girls.

Being from where he is from and given his past, which we don’t know fully, but I can imagine it wasn’t an easy ride, has engrained a pack mentality/instinct into him. There is a hierarchy, me at the top, then him as my number 2, making the girls his sole job to protect and defend, which is obvious he will do until his dying day.

 

 

He cares deeply when our daughter is upset or hurt, he never goes far from her side, and I’m told when I’m not there, he is extra vigilant and protective!

All in all, a blummin good boy!

This blog doesn’t really do the pol justice… As I write this he is sat next to me on the lawn, eyes open just looking at me, maybe wishing I was my wife instead but who knows, he’s here and he’s happy.

I’ve said I will never get another dog, we will never ever find a better dog than Woody, I just hope he sticks around for a very long time.

Thanks for everything pooch!

Take it easy

TM

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