My terrier Bess and the black lurcher at Sough in 1957.
It wasn’t all work at Sough. I managed to find time at weekends to buy the odd dog or two, go for walks on Kelbrook Moor and get up to mischief at the pub. This included breaking my duck as a virgin in a quarry up Kelbrook Old Road so that was all right! I bought a Jack Russell terrier bitch off Dick Allen at Lower Sandiford Farm, Blacko and called her Bess and she was a topper, we went miles together both on foot and in the wagon. A relationship with a good dog is a very special thing and I had a beauty there. The sad thing was that Bess had a terrible death. It happened in 1959 when we moved to Barlick and she ran onto a broken bottle in some long grass in the field and it slit her belly open. I took her to the vet who sewed her up and for a while she made a good recovery, she even jumped on my lap one day. Then she went missing and a few days afterwards the RSPCA inspector called in to say that they had found her but had put her down because she was in such a terrible state. Losing a good mate like that because of somebody else’s stupidity is very hard.
It's like that with dogs, eventually you have to pay the price for the good times.