Oscar the Springer Spaniel

I am Oscar and this is part of my story.

One day the people at the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary said “You know John who takes you for walkies?” Yes. “Well you have to go and look after him.

He will be your daddy.” So I have to take daddy for walks and I have to eat daddy’s food and chew his slippers and give daddy a cuddle. Sometimes I have to bark, also.

We often go walkies in the hills. There are lots of things to sniff in the hedges and lots of smelly mud to roll in and I often like to get lots of sticky plant bits in my coat. This gives daddy hours of fun cleaning me and grooming me. It is great running around. I chase things but they always get away, by flying. Sometimes on the hills we just sit down and look at the view and I snuggle up to daddy, which he likes. Daddy always makes me wear a little box called The Tracker. He says The Tracker always knows where I am. The Tracker is obviously very nosey, but I have to put up with it.

Daddy’s house is split into two halves. Daddy’s half is upstairs. I used to go up there a lot but he said he could not sleep with me jumping on him at half past two, and besides a man called Mr Vet said it was not very good for my legs to run up and down the stairs.

Mr Vet is in charge of daddy because daddy always says “Yes I see”. There is also Mrs Vet, who is also in charge of daddy. Daddy says “OK I’ll do that”. Usually, daddy and I go to see Mr and Mrs Vet for no real reason and he says “I was just a bit worried”, and they say “It’s all OK, never mind”. Once I cut my tail on a thorn and daddy phoned them and said “He’s cut his tail” and they stayed open specially for us, and then they said, “It’s OK, it’s just a little nick, here is some ointment, never mind.” Very embarrassing.

Anyway, my half of the house is downstairs where I have a TV and a sofa and my bed and my kitchen and my water bowls. And there is my garden. There is food in my kitchen but daddy hides it and only lets me see the food at certain times, trying to show he is in charge.

Daddy’s car is good. I have a bed in the back and a good view and I can bark a lot at all the trees and other cars. The nice thing about the car is we always end up somewhere good. The furthest we go is Yorkshire on a farm where there are other dogs. Or even further, we go to a place called France to see daddy’s relatives, who make very nice food, but often they put the food in high places which I cannot reach, I don’t know why. Once I got a piece of food. Later daddy told me it was called “high-quality artisan sausage,” well it was big and yummy. It was a great game, they all chased me around but they could not catch me. Eventually, they looked disappointed and said “now we have to cook something else.”

Daddy thought we should go to a training class. How we laughed! A lady said to daddy “make him sit”. So daddy said “sit”, so I laid on my tummy. And she said, “no tell him to sit, that’s lying down”. Daddy made me get up and then said “sit”, so laid on my tummy. I think this means daddy is not very well trained, anyway he gave up, I was just confused. So you see looking after daddy gives me lots of things to do, and a big fun adventure.

John had never had a dog before Oscar. He was one of our regular dog walkers for a long time before being in a position to adopt. It was through dog walking that John developed a love of Springer Spaniels as he regularly walked residents Billy and Oscar. He got to know Oscar really well during his visits to the Sanctuary, which meant Oscar was only too happy to one day go home with John. Thank you for the lovely update John; we are all so happy your first dog has been such a success, and that you chose our Sanctuary