Animal No. 3 – Ella Fitzgerald the French spaniel

Ella’s first bath

The pet shop at Bolougne-sur-Mer is opposite the Auchan hypermarket and is a terrible temptation, these days we know better and don’t go in there anymore – we always want to buy all the dogs and frequently consider acquiring birds, gerbils and chipmunks.

Soon after we got Churchill the German Pinscher we made the mistake of looking in the pet shop and convinced ourselves that just one more dog wouldn’t matter especially as Churchill is a total wimp and didn’t sleep well at night – we kidded ourselves that a companion would mean better sleep for all of us.

There was a beautiful puppy in the cage, she was labelled a Picardy spaniel and had big sad eyes and she’d been in there for at least 8 weeks and to cut a long story short – we bought her home!

We decided to call the puppy Ella Fitzgerald after my favourite female singer.

Ella and Churchill are inseparable even though she is much bigger than him

Churchill was massively excited – he absolutely adores all other dogs, and cats,  and humans – big and small.  The dogs have their own room in the house and we put a barrier in the middle of the room – Churchill on one side and the puppy on the other til they calmed down and prepared ourselves for a sleepless night what with it being Ella’s first night and Churchill being excited to the point of madness.

Woke up next morning – there hadn’t been a peep from either of the dogs.  We wondered if they’d had a fight to the death (we are relative newbies to dog owning) but when we went in to the room, Ella had managed to squeeze through a tiny gap in the barrier separating them and the pair of them were snuggled up.

They have been together for two years now and they are inseparable.  When Ella had an operation and had to be kept in isolation to protect her wound, Churchill howled the entire night and the next night too.  He only stopped when she was back with him.

Ella has turned into a gorgeous dog – our vet says she is supremely fit, she’s like a supermodel  dog – but she definitely isn’t a Picardy Spaniel as she was labelled in the pet shop, well not in looks anyway – she certainly has the lovely nature of a Picardy Spaniel but we think she’s a German Shepherd crossed with a Labrador!  She’s slightly neurotic, can be very skittish and has a habit of looking into your eyes like you are the only person in the world that she cares for.  She is a terrible tart and does the looking in the eyes thing with everyone she likes which is pretty much everyone she meets!

We decided then that one cat and two dogs was definitely enough …