I closed the door very slowly feeling dazed!! Puppies? Nanette and Puppies? ' But they told me she was sterilised???'....I went to the drawer and searched for the identity papers.....there they were...Nanette, Male, Castre!!!!! Mon Dieu!! I knew then that anything was possible with a mistake like that!!!! I felt angry!! What incompetence!!!

I heard Nanette behind the closed door and went immediately to her. I let her out and she rushed to the bed in the corner...after all, it was the first time she had voluntarily left the corner and gone as far as the passageway to my bedroom!! ! 'If you are going to have babies cherie, we are going to have them together' !! I said ( in French of course ). I prepared towels, boiled water and waited....and waited.....and waited some more. There were no babies!!

SO......it was 'a piece of cake' after this!! and ' everyone lived happily ever after...' didn't they?  No, not as simple as that!! BUT, this was a major turning point in my attitude and therefore the way I handled the problem. Even so, although I had decided to depend on my own intuition, I was about to question further and find another layer to be dealt with!!

One morning, our vet arrived. She came to make a thorough examination of Nanette because in nearly three weeks there had been no bowel movements (not surprising in the circumstances!).

Our vet is a small robust young woman and without preliminaries, she rolled up her sleeves while I cleared a space on the low table in the lounge. Then we got the harness on and heaved Nanette up on to the table. After a thorough check, she didn't feel there was much to worry about and gave me a prescription for the problem.

The first night after Nanette's arrival was very difficult for us both. She was rigid with fear and I was losing my confidence in bucketloads because of fatigue and a heavy feeling of responsibility. Needless to mention, neither of us had much sleep.

The next day, I phoned a Behaviourist and described the scenario. She said 'Put the food and the water down where you want her to eat and drink, show her the door and don't make eye contact.'  I duly placed food and water in the kitchen where previous dear dogs (RIP) had always eaten....I knew as I did it that this was pointless in the circumstances.

This is the story of Nanette, and in many ways, it is also my story.

The first thing I noticed were the gates... they were open but they were tall, solid and very dark with an air of finality about them which shouted 'confinement' at me. I immediately felt deeply depressed.

We drove in and parked. The clear sky and sunshine... even in February and the smiles and welcome of the kind people who greeted us did nothing to alter this feeling. The barking of some 80 dogs was deafening as I opened the door of the car......each one seemed to have a message and yet the message was always the same...'Please take me home'.