7th December

Having told you some of the negative comments I receive concerning the rescue, rather than become defensive and try explain why I do it I thought I would share with you some of the dogs who have shared my life and given me a deep love of this breed.

The first is Sam, or Samantha as we presumed she was when we discovered she was a bitch!

Sam appeared next door to me when I was aged nine, obtained from Birmingham Dogs Home by my neighbours after they had had a nasty scare from a "Peeping Tom"! The husband was tour manager for the band The Kinks and had an attractive young wife, totally out of place in a small Warwickshire village but then we were "newcomers" too having moved into one of the new houses!

Presumably, they had gone to the dogs home and picked the most vicious looking dog they could find as a guard dog! Maybe they did not even realise she was a girl when they called her Sam! They certainly took little notice of her tethering her in the back garden where she made extraordinary noises. When she was free she would come round to us and we would give her a treat.

Then they moved and just before the vans drove off the man turned to us (children) and asked did we want to keep the dog! I remember my mother not believing us, it certainly seems unbelievable now.

So Sam came to be ours. My parents both knew she was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and had quite a lot of knowledge of and respect for the breed.

 I remember reading the description in The Observers Book Of Dogs, "Strong, Brave and intelligent", Which my father found very amusing.

Sam was a middle aged brindle bitch, taller than the present show Stafford, but this was the 1960's so the standard had only just been lowered.

My father managed a nursery growing roses and hardy nursery stock close to our house and Sam ran loose round the village. She adored my father and would spend much time with him at work but would also disappear and appear again at home on what we came to call her "secret paths".

We soon found out we weren't the only ones she called on for treats! She had a network of second homes where she would turn up in time for coffee and biscuits at one, tea and cake at another and one she used to get another dinner!

She would chase the butchers van from one end of the village to the other. Ask to go out in the middle of the night just to raid the neighbours dustbins. The local villagers were askance at this "townie" dog rampaging her way through the village.

 I loved her and wrote a book about her and her exploits complete with sketches.

She used to follow us onto the school bus and they would stop at the bottom of the hill to kick her off again.

She developed an uneasy relationship with our cat a huge male tabby, mainly walking around each other but both loved the fire and would lie in front of it until one night, horror of horrors their paws touched!

Sam would toast herself in front of the fire until her belly glowed red eventually moving to slump down panting a few feet away.

She would greet you if you came from another room as if you had been gone for a month. One time she was knawing a shin bone in the garden when my father came home and in her joy at seeing her master return, she chucked it in the air and swallowed it whole! With no ill effect apart from terrible wind!

We had  french windows at the back of the house and she would look through asking to come in on return from one of her jaunts, we would say, "there's a big black face at the window," until eventually her face turned grey and then white and we had to change it to "a big white face at the window".

After she died I said I was going to get a Stafford of my own when I was older.........and that's where it all started.