Last week we said goodbye to our dog and friend of the last few years, CANNA. She was a fortnight short of her fourteenth birthday, the fifth dog we have owned since our first in 1971.

KATIE MALACCA, a Dalmatian, bred in Singapore, came home to the UK aboard one of the company’s ships, Bencruachan. We put her aboard in Singapore at Easter 1973 to travel via Penang and South Africa (the Suez Canal was closed at the time). Bencruachan was hit and badly damaged by a freak wave off Durban where Katie spent a few weeks before being carried on to London and to quarantine kennels in Somerset. She was released in the week before Christmas. In the Spring of 1974, she joined us in Scotland. She never did like water after her adventure.

After Katie we welcomed GUINNESS, the first of our Black Labradors. She came to us with a crumpled ear. She traveled with us on holidays to Jura and Colonsay in the Western Isles and on many long walks in the Trossachs. She looked after us for many years until we moved back to Somerset. She now lies under a full-grown cherry tree, a tree that came with us as a shoot grown in our Scottish Garden.

Only weeks went by before two more black labs, JURA and BARRA, came to live with us. We went to their breeder to buy one puppy. They said they had a canceled order. We came away with the siblings. Together they were adventurous, often going walkabout, fortunately never getting into serious trouble. Barra outlived her sister by a few years.

After a pause, CANNA came to live with us, not a black lab, but a golden lab. She never went far from home, yet we walked many miles round our fields and woodland together. Now the house is very empty without her.