Hugo

Hugo (Domino) 2003-12

Our Happy ending story.

We finally had a house that was big enough with sufficient garden to have a Dalmatian. My dotty wife finally talked me into having one, and we were definitely going to have a liver spotted bitch. Then contacting Nina Byles and visiting her premises we saw a black spotted dog by the name of Domino. After I received up to 10 texts from my wife saying ‘Pleeeeeeease’, we decided to have him. Nina described him as needing an ‘understanding home’ and boy, were we understanding. 5 minutes in and he’d chewed the seatbelts in my car. We then decided that he didn’t look like Domino and so renamed him Hugo, perfect. However unperfect was that he wasn’t socialised, housetrained or obedient in many ways. We were robbed of 3 months sleep trying to settle him in and on walks when we met other dogs & owners we would say “Oh Hugo he’s a rescue, we’ve only had him 2 days, then 2 weeks, then 2 months until it became ‘we’ve only had him 2 years” as he made a slight improvement.

However we really enjoyed him, and we did work hard with him, having many a long walk into the countryside, also we were pulled around our local town on a nightly basis, and spending £000’s on a back operation. He was good at digging in the sand and many a beach was changed due to his digging claws and ‘eating’ the sand…..Of particular note was his penchant for egg rolls and chocolate birthday cake, which he would steal from the table at family events and try and gulp down in one go; Much to everyone else’s horror and our secret mirth.

Hugo was always ready to give his Mummy a big Dalmatian smile whenever she arrived home from work, accompanied by a waggy tail. They were inseparable, I used to engineer it that Hugo would go into our bedroom first and wake my wife up when I took her breakfast in bed; always softened the blow for her of being woken up. He also had fun ‘assessing’ our newly rescued Maine Coon cat, Archie, who didn’t want to come out of his room for the first 2 weeks.

Unfortunately in early 2012 Hugo was diagnosed with Bone Cancer and we lost him in December. He is sadly missed, but our new Dalmatian is another great dog, not a replacement.

The main photo of him having fun at Swanage Pier and the second is of him looking sheepish behind the gate after being banned from the cake table!

 

Richard Hewitt