We have always had dogs except for a brief time when we returned to the UK from New Zealand. Given the nature of our return (we had lost everything - house and belongings - in the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011) we were at a low point, to say the least. One of the hardest decisions we'd had to make was rehoming our pair of Golden Retrievers, George and Mildred. At the time Christchurch was still being rocked by aftershocks (more than 12 per day) and all of us were suffering
