We learnt very quickly that Tilly was not the best behaved, not to say she was badly behaved, but she was definitely naughty. She was particularly naughty when on walks, because she knew exactly where she wanted to go and there was not a chance in hell of you changing her mind. If there was a smell she wanted to sniff you were stopping there until she was done and no matter how hard you tried to get her to move she would not budge. The amount of looks we got as cars drove past or people walked by when Tilly was digging her paws in and sticking her bottom in the air I cannot even count. Another issue we had when walking, especially at the beginning, was to do with eating food littered on the pavement but we will talk more about this later because there are some many stories I have to tell you about Tilly and food.

Anyway, the first time we took her on a walk to the park as a family, we very soon discovered Tilly was even worse off the lead than on the lead. My brother, who I hasten to add is one of the cleverest people I know, doesn’t always have the gift of common sense. He decided it was a great idea to let our new dog, who we already know was not very well trained, off the lead in an unfenced park. Of course, Tilly immediately did what any sensible dog would do and charged straight towards the road in the opposite direction to the grass. My brother then further exacerbated this situation by hurtling after her in a blind panic, causing Tilly to speed up in pure joy frolicking directly towards the road in what she saw as a wonderful game of chase. My other brother’s girlfriend of the time then sprinted after them both trying to yell to my brother that Tilly was going to run faster the more he tried to catch her because she thought it was a game. He did not hear her and the two of them were now racing after her. I then joined this three ringed circus and tagged along after them as any ten-year-old would. I can only imagine what any onlookers thought to see a small, short legged Jack Russel joyfully bounding along, followed by 2 hysterical adults and a confused child.

Safe to say we did catch Tilly and no harm came to her (or anybody else partaking in the chase!). We did learn however not to let Tilly off in any unfenced area, and only to let her off if there were no forests nearby. It turns out Tilly was trained as a ratter, so she never lost the instinct to go after any interesting smells regardless of where they ended up. We also never let her off without a big pocket full of treats, which she would always return to because food was one of Tilly’s greatest loves.