Cap

This is Cap, one of two pups that came to us from a dales farm in 1993.
A vet had attended the farm and during the visit he and the farmer discovered three pups, aged at least 4 months, in a barn.
It was the squeaking they were making that alerted them.

The farmer had no idea they were there. They would have been born in late October, early November and there had not been much work to do and his bitch had snuck off to have the pups in secret.
She had weaned them and fed them on rabbits she had been catching.
The farmer had seen her taking rabbits into the barn but had assumed she was supplementing her diet and thought no more about it.

The vet told Nicki and suggested she got in touch, which she did.
The farmer said he would keep one of the pups but we should come and take the other two. As it was not far away from where we lived, Nicki set off on foot to pick them up.
It turned out that they were quite big, so she brought one back and went over again the next day for the other. That was Cap.

It had snowed overnight and was a very overcast day but she set our again, over the moor to collect Cap. On the way back the weather broke and it started to snow heavily.
By that time she had reached one of the single lane roads that crosses the high moors and she was walking along it towards home.
It was a bit of a whiteout and she had to use her feet to find the road and stick to it with Cap tucked down her coat, well buttoned in.

She heard a car and after a while it came slowly up the road behind her. The couple in the car were arguing and shouting but he slowed and stopped and the lady passenger wound down the window and shouted to Nicki,
"He said, Do you want a Lift?".
Nicki replied, "I wouldn't say No!".
To which the woman turned to the man and shouted,"Drive on, she says no" and they drove off down the road wobbling a bit as they tried to keep out of the ditches on either side.

Nicki thought "Oh, No, I should have been clearer" but as the car drove off, skidding a little, she thought again "I may have dodged a bullet there" and put her head down and legged it for home.

That was the beginning of a relationship with Cap that lasted until he died at 16 years of age. A few miles in a snowstorm together can cast such a bond.
He was so timid and so poorly socialised having lived in a barn for so long without human contact, he could not be re-homed because he did not trust people.
So he stayed because he had bonded to her and she to him.

He tolerated Mike at first, but only because Nicki did, but soon Cap had another friend in him as well.
Everyone else was likely to get nipped, although he had mellowed a bit by the time he was 14.

There is a lot more to his story and it will be told, but for now let it be known that he was a fine and fierce friend and a faithful companion to us and all we can do to the other people he came in contact with is appologise and say, although we are sorry, we would not have changed him for the world.

to be continued...........