Old McLarsen had some Farms

Chapter Six: A Little Honey Called Candy

I could hardly believe it was happening. We were really moving to the country-beginning the journey to our vision of freedom. And as if that wasn't enough to delight and excite me, I could also have a dog again.

"Remember how impatient I was?" I ask Kanute, as I tell him I'm writing about Candy.

Kanute laughs. "Who could possibly forget?"

"What a honey of a dog." I smile too, as I picture that golden puppy as I first saw her, in a pet shop cage. "Take me, take me," she clearly said, with her soft brown eyes.

"Remember Kanute? I didn't imagine it, did I?"

"Definitely not. Shame we have no photos of her as a pup. She was a little beauty, that one."

"She surely was."

I think sadly of how few photos we have of those days. It was an expensive business, buying film and getting photos developed. You had to use up the whole roll of film before posting it off, and wait and wait for it to come back. That wait for its return could take another week, or more. Imagine then finding out you had over-exposed it, or chopped someone's head off. Dad always did that with his old box Brownie camera. That's one memory that always brings a smile to my face. Funny things - memories. One thought leads to another, just the way one snowball can set off a whole avalanche...

It had been a long time without a dog of my own, since the first one in my life, my sweet Kim. He was a large curly Airedale Terrier, crossed with something. Until my brother Barry joined the Navy and his career found him sailing on faraway seas for the next six years, Kim had been his dog. Kim was entrusted to my care because of the besotted love we shared. I was young to be this big dog's mother - but it was of small importance to any of the three of us.

Many life happenings conspired to create that ten-year gap from when Kim died, until I could get a puppy again. While I was in my second year at high school, Mum and Dad and I moved to a new home, and they hadn't wanted another dog. A few years later, Kanute and I married. The flats we rented in two Australian States had not permitted keeping dogs. Finally the time and place had come; we could expand our furry family.

Choosing her name was too easy. This sweet puppy was absolutely Candy. What a roly-poly golden girl; with the biggest, melted-chocolate brown eyes we'd ever seen. Despite starting life as a city slicker, she happily made the 'tree change' with us. Framed by the endless horizon of her new great outdoors, she appeared incredibly small and vulnerable.

"But Candy didn't feel small and vulnerable." Kanute is looking over my shoulder as I write.

"I know. Funny little girl - she embraced farm-life with gusto, just like she faced everything else in her world." Her ever-twitching nose showed how much the new smells and sounds enchanted and intrigued her. Every new creature she met became another friend to investigate and play with - and lick half to death.

Candy was no watchdog. Her supposedly warning bark always came with a furiously wagging tail, and the broadest, dumbest grin imaginable. A burglar could have taken everything we possessed, and she would have given him a kiss goodbye. Her role in life was obviously to live, love and help to rear anything needing a little encouragement. Like all of our animal variety children, Candy had absolutely no idea she was a dog, or even what a dog actually was.

Following her 'hands-on' (or 'paws-on'?) experience of growing up with her kangaroo sibling Ooroo, Candy confidently decided she could co-raise any species known to man. Whenever necessary, she aided and abetted rearing of numerous rescues - feathered or furred, two or four-legged; this mattered not at all.

"It seemed like she could never decide whether she would be mother or sister," I say.

Kanute laughs. "As if they cared! So long as she fussed over them, they were happy."