Seven, she’s seven…there I’ve said it now..

When we first brought Susie-Belle into our lives we didn’t know her exact age but the rescue charity had her down as 4 years old.  Four years spent churning out puppies, being neglected, starved and abused, the horror of this was almost too much for me to think about, but I took a kind of naive comfort in thinking it was four years, not the eight or nine that I’ve heard about with some of these poor puppy farm dogs.

But over the few months we’ve been loving and caring for Susie-Belle, I’ve accepted that she is probably older than four. People’s reactions when I’ve said four have often been less than discrete at revealing that I must be dreaming if I think that.  She does look older, but then who wouldn’t look older after the life she led till relatively recently?

When we were last in France, we asked our vet there what he thought about her age. He looked at her teeth and said that she was older than four – yeah, yeah, we know that I thought – but less than eight as he said that at eight their teeth start to separate and gaps appear. I don’t know if this is at all true – our opthalmologist here in the UK rubbished that as a dating theory, but you know the French and English have a long history of disagreeing.

Anyhow, we both accepted that she’s most likely about six or seven. So that’s what I now tell people when they ask about her, “she’s six or seven” I say and I swallow back a tinge of sadness at the thought of those extra few years on her life that were wasted and painful for her and think happy thoughts that now she’s with us, and she will be for more years of happiness than those previous six or seven spent in sadness.

Susie-Belle my poppetty angel, we love you no matter how old you are baby girl.