I Remember Lassie.

As a puppy.

about 6 months old at the farm in the Borders.

aged about 6-7 years with Julie outside the house near Nethy Bridge , in the Highlands.

Lassie, a Rough Collie bitch was my first, very own dog. As a child I had always been a sucker for Lassie films and had sobbed my way through all of them and now I owned one of these wonderful, beautiful dogs and I couldn't name her anything else other than "Lassie"!

She was the wisest of dogs and always welcomed visitors, no matter how long it had been since she had last seen them and when the children were born she put up with all their nonsense as well.

My husband used to tell of how she would sleep on my side of the bed during the day if I was away from home for any length of time and he was outside. He never found her there: oh no, she always met him in the kitchen but the evidence was on the bed in the shape of a "nest" and sand from her coat!

She could be left to run about the farmyard if we were away and she never strayed, unlike a Samoyed I had in later years who wandered continually and had to be confined.

The only damage she ever did was when she was a puppy and she tore some wallpaper. I think fondly of this when clearing up the debris in the kitchen after my papillon pups are left to their own devices!

She died aged 13 years, while we were living on the farm at Nethy Bridge, Inverness-shire.

( the photos are all from scanned slides)

For more "memory" stories look here.