Adventures in Petsitting
The Third Mabel
Mabel, from the Latin for ‘lovable,’ proves to be the perfect name.
By Jane Thomas
My first Mabel was over ten years ago, 140lbs of lolloping Saint Bernard convinced she was a lapdog. She cried the first night when I closed the bedroom door so, much to her drooling delight, I gave in and surrendered a good four fifths of the bed. My second Mabel was a few years back, a beautiful young German Shorthaired Pointer who skidded around on Yorkshire’s winter ice and burrowed her face into my shoulder by the fire.
And my third Mabel was a two-year-old ball-obsessed Golden Retriever who willingly walked mile after mile through the Cotswolds.
We stayed in an old cottage: it looked out over one of the five valleys that ease their way down towards Stroud, a picture-perfect town with quirky cafes and independent shops. The Cotswolds is almost ridiculously dog-friendly, so much so that I’d say Mabel was greeted more enthusiastically by shop owners than I was as a mere paying customer. She was welcome in every shop, pub and restaurant we visited, and nine times out of ten there was a jar of dog treats sitting waiting on the counter.
Mabel is the sort of dog who brings joy wherever she goes. Even on the days when drizzle set in and wellington boots got sucked into muddy streams, her playful optimism and perma-grin meant it was impossible to be grumpy. We took to visiting a nearby field of buttercups every evening and it doesn’t take long to instill a habit – or perhaps an expectation – in a dog, because within three days she had learned that this was part of her new routine. She would insist on carrying the ball there so by the time we arrived it was a tennis ball drenched in slobber that we picked up gingerly between thumb and forefinger and threw as well as we could.
