One Dog at a Time (29 page)

We left Nowzad lying tired out on the concrete floor as we walked the few yards to the next kennel.

We had no idea what the two of them would have been like together so we had made the decision for them to spend the six months’ quarantine on their own. Time to socialise them would come later.

The moment I appeared at the plastic viewing grille Tali went completely berserk running around and around in circles. She carried on like this as I walked in until she finally came to rest at Lisa’s feet. The two of them hit it off just like that. Tali had found her owner. It was as natural and easy as that.

Lisa’s nickname for Tali came easily too. She took one look at the slightly scary way Tali pulled back her lips to reveal her white teeth when she was playing and was immediately reminded of her least favourite movie monster.

‘Come here, little Alien,’ she smiled.

After spending about an hour with Nowzad and Tali we said our farewells.

Apart from the quarantine requirement, they both needed medical attention including worming. They would also need to go through the slow painstaking process of having the numerous ticks they each carried removed. Any worries I had about leaving them there were lifted by the main keeper, Rebecca, and her staff, however.

I could tell during the following months Tali was going to become the little darling of the quarantine with people
fussing
over her all the time. Even other owners who had their own dogs in quarantine were already taking time out to see Tali, who didn’t mind in the slightest.

Rebecca was an expert at bringing out the friendly side in dogs. She assured me that she would work hard on bringing the best out of Nowzad in the weeks ahead.

As we left the quarantine I was quietly confident that all would work out well. I would travel up to see the two dogs as often as I could. When the BBC had stated an interest in filming the dogs Dave and John had immediately joined me in the long journey to the rescue. Dave had hoped it would improve his profile with the ladies. Me and John had just laughed.

And still they were both scared of Nowzad, feeding him biscuits through the fence while I sat with him.

As I drove home I felt like it was the beginning of a new day. For the past five months or so my head had been filled with thoughts of what might have been if things had been different during my time in Afghanistan. From now on it was going to be about the future, not the past. It was all about what we could achieve now.

* * *

The road to the beach was surprisingly busy for Christmas Day. Cars were streaming out from the town.

‘What’s going on down here? I thought everybody would be at home opening presents?’ I said to Lisa.

As I turned the car on to the main sea front drive we both let out a low ‘wow’. There seemed to be thousands of people walking, driving or cycling along the beach road.

‘Look at the pub,’ I exclaimed as we drove past happily beer-swilling punters spilling out on to the road as they struggled to find room in the outdoor seating area.

‘Look at those mad fools,’ Lisa shouted. I turned to look down on the beach in the direction she was pointing.

‘No way.’

There must have been over 500 crazy idiots stood in swimsuits or bikinis about to make a mad dash into the rough sea. We had our winter coats on. It wasn’t that warm out there.

We continued driving slowly along the beach front but the crowds didn’t thin out. If anything it was getting busier as we moved further away from the pub and arcade areas.

‘This is a bad idea, way too many people,’ I told myself.

I had planned on Nowzad having a bit of peace and quiet for his first walk of freedom. I seriously doubted whether this was going to happen today.

Eventually I found an empty parking slot facing the beach. I pulled in and turned the engine off. Right in front of us was a parking meter. It read ‘Charges apply 365 days of the year’.

‘Miserable bastards,’ I said as Lisa and I both rifled through our pockets trying to cuff together the required 85 pence.

There were so many people walking past us I still couldn’t believe it. There were mums and dads nervously following their kids as they tottered along the promenade on their new bikes, young couples were strolling along arm in arm, groups playing ball on the damp beach and dogs running wild, lots of dogs running wild.

The one thing that I couldn’t see was somebody else getting ready to break in a former Afghan fighting dog with no ears.

‘Oh shit, this really is a bad idea,’ I said.

‘Not one of your better ones, I must admit,’ Lisa replied.

We’d collected Nowzad and Tali from the quarantine on Christmas Eve, on the last day of their six months in isolation. The weather had been wet and damp. It had reminded me of Afghanistan the previous Christmas.

It was a busy period for us. We were halfway through
moving
to a new house in a new area. Not our choice but sometimes you didn’t get much say as far as the military were concerned. It wouldn’t be a permanent home, of course. Nothing ever was in the forces. We could be posted elsewhere at a minute’s notice.

A pile of boxes, suitcases, rucksacks and plastic bags were sitting in the hallway waiting for us to unpack. When that was going to happen I didn’t know, although if Lisa had anything to do with it they wouldn’t stay there for very long.

Most of the quarantine staff had come to see Nowzad and Tali go. I thought I even saw a few tears.

It was the first time Nowzad and Tali had been outside for over six months. I don’t know who was more excited, us or them. Getting to the car for the drive home took nearly half an hour as both dogs dragged us around the woods outside the quarantine. We let them, as we thought it was only fair. Nowzad, when I thought about it, had been shut in an enclosed space for nearly thirteen months.

Both rummaged and sniffed everything and anything they could find.

Finally Nowzad stopped and stood by my legs. I rubbed his head while he sniffed the air of the quarantine car park.

When the Afghan dogs had met Fizz and Beamer it had been almost a non-event. Both sets of dogs sniffed each other and then lost interest and wandered off. The precaution of having Nowzad wear a muzzle had proven unnecessary.

Fizz and Beamer were with us today. The sight of the beach and the hordes of other dogs running around had them chomping at the bit to get out. I wasn’t worried about them running off. My concern was Tali and, in particular, Nowzad.

I looked over the back seat and at Nowzad and Tali in their separate travel crates with Fizz and Beamer between them.

‘We are here now, Nowzad, try and behave, buddy,’ I said.

Nowzad was sat upright patiently waiting to be let out so he could discover even more smells in this strange, new world.

‘Ready?’ I asked Lisa.

‘No,’ she said as she slipped out of the passenger seat and walked to the back door of the car.

As soon as she had opened the door both Beamer and Fizz were straining their necks out of the door, trying to take in the view. Our two foreign dogs were making little whimpering noises as they pawed the mesh flaps of their travel crates.

Nowzad stood quite happily while I attached his full body harness. At least I had some experience of walking him from the compound. Tali had never been walked before. We couldn’t risk her running off so she wore a full body harness as well.

The waves crashed against the shoreline, sending the spray flying through the air. I sat on a large boulder that had been worn smooth by the constant motion of the incoming tide.

After a good 30-minute walk along the bottom of the shale cliffs Nowzad had finally stopped pulling on his lead for all he was worth and was now sitting quietly by my side.

He had curled up tight in a ball with just his head held up looking out towards the surf. I imagined he was still trying to work out what the foaming white waves were.

Tali, still on her lead, was running around Lisa as she in turn was chasing Fizz Dog. Beamer was running alongside them further up the beach.

I stroked Nowzad along the back of his head as the wind whistled over the flat sandy beach. He turned his head towards me, his big brown eyes still looking sad but showing no hint of worry about what lay in store for him in this
unfamiliar
place. I figured he had enough savvy to know it couldn’t be any worse than the life he had left behind.

I looked out to sea. There was nothing on the horizon, just the distant tips of breaking waves and the odd seagull swooping low to make a catch.

My mind wandered back to Afghanistan, Now Zad and, for some reason, to the curly-haired, smiling figure of Rosi. For a minute I was back with him on the roof of the galley building talking away about everything and anything without either of us understanding the other in the slightest. Maybe we hadn’t needed to. We had been friends. That was enough.

‘I wonder what Rosi is up to, eh Nowzad?’ I asked Nowzad out loud. But he had already closed his eyes and looked asleep. I couldn’t blame him. After all this was the furthest he had walked in nearly 13 months, since he’d first crept into the compound and my life.

The compound. My thoughts drifted back to the mud-walled fortress and a part of my life that was now gone for good. As I shut my eyes and let the sea breeze wash over me, I could see the dogs that had made my six months there bearable. Skinny RPG sat on top of the pillow on the cardboard box near the galley, patiently waiting for his turn in the breakfast queue. Of all the dogs, he had been the one that I thought would be here with me now. He would have loved running free with Beamer on the beach. I just hoped that he had managed to chew loose the bindings on his front legs.

I chuckled to myself as I pictured little AK, that mini-version of RPG. I hoped she had managed to escape with RPG and that, wherever they were, they were having fun, tussling and chasing each other.

We would never know what had happened to the two of them. In truth, I doubted they were both still alive.

I smiled again as I remembered Patches and Dushka trotting along to the LS with us. It had been funny to watch. I
fought
to control my thoughts. I still had no idea what had happened to Patches. I knew every time I looked at Tali I would see him there, tail wagging.

Maybe I could have saved them but I had made the decision not to. Instead Nowzad was next to me on the beach. That was nearly ten months ago now. Time was flying by. So much had changed, so much had happened.

I stroked Nowzad’s head a few more times; his light brown hair was damp from the sea breeze.

‘But we got you two guys out, didn’t we?’ I said aloud.

I doubted anybody else, let alone Nowzad, would blame me for not getting them all out. But I knew I would always blame myself.

Lisa was coming back along the beach towards us, Beamer in the lead as always.

‘Come on, Nowzad,’ I said, ‘time to go home.’

The two of us sat around the table surrounded by our four dogs as we ate our Christmas dinner. I couldn’t stop smiling. For the second successive Christmas, Nowzad munched away at his own slice of turkey for his evening meal.

As Lisa and I lazed around on Christmas night, I couldn’t help but think back to the previous Christmas Day in the Now Zad DC.

If I had known then what I knew now. Would I have guessed that I would now be running a charity set up specifically to try and help Afghanistan and its people and animals? I doubted it.

I now had an opportunity to do something positive at last. We had plans to use some of the money the charity had received for the only one of the two puppies that had survived from Tali’s litter. He was almost a year old and we had named him Helmand.

Thanks to the charity we were beginning to make plans to fly him to the UK in January. We already had a prospective home lined up.

We were also trying to put in place a proposal to train young Afghan vets. There was a desperate shortage of them out there. They would help make a real difference to the welfare of not just the dogs but the farm animals that were desperately needed to support the remote villages.

But the dogs for now were going to be the main focus of our efforts for the next year or so. When I had flown out of Afghanistan I had left behind thousands of stray dogs, many of them living in pitiful conditions or – worse – being abused in dogfights. They’d had no hope. Helmand was going to be the latest in what I hoped would be a long line of dogs that would find a loving home.

I had briefly checked my email as we had got back from the beach. I knew it was Christmas Day but I had just had a feeling there was going to be some news.

Sure enough, as I logged on one email stood out. The subject was direct and to the point: ‘Afghan dog’.

The email from a soldier out in Helmand was simple:

I am serving in Afghanistan and have befriended a young stray dog that lives in the military base where I am stationed. Can you help me rescue it? I can’t just leave it here to starve
.

I smiled as I read it. I now had a new mission in my life and this time it didn’t involve being armed to the teeth.

I knew it would probably at times prove to be extremely frustrating but then Afghanistan always was. Anyway, we had already proved that it could be done.

I looked at Nowzad and Tali sleeping quite happily in their new dog beds. I needed to reply quickly. I knew that the soldier would want to know there was somebody else in the world that thought like he did.

I had another dog to rescue.