Frosty with Blizzard
Frosty was my first dog in Wales. I had had a lovely collie Tibby-Dog] in Exeter before I came up here so I went in search of another. Frosty was offered to me by the RSPCA. She was temporarily with a vet in Pwllheli and was two days beyong stay of execution. She had been living wild and someone must have trapped her somehow as she was not catchable by hand. She was as wild as a fox.
I tied her to the front seat so that she couldn’t leap into the gears while I was driving. Then I drove slowly back to Trawsfynydd one handed, stroking her with the other hand. She just lay there and shivered but by the time we got home she had decided I was her one guarantee of safety. At first she would not come inside the house unless there was no one there but me. Then gradually she progressed to occupying her basket behind my armchair while my Mum was having her tea in the opposite armchair — this only so laong as I was in mine. Mum was provided with a bisuit barrel with dog biscuits and Frosty would cross over to her, take a biscuit, eat it in her basket and go back for the second, third and fourth,
As years went on she began to accept other visitors but only if all were sitting down and I was between them and her. It was six years before one day she came out in the presence of people. Friends had been to dinner and then had drunk coffee in the sitting room with Frosty in her basket. Then they collected coats and were all standing ready to go when one friend said, ‘Look at Frosty!’ and she was walking among them. But that had taken six years so something very bad must have happened to her in her past.
She was a wonderful duck dog and would round up the ducks and put them to bed for me. When she first came she wanted to play with them so, in case she knew Welsh, I asked my Welsh teacher, ‘Waht do you say to a dog to tell it no, you mustn’t do that.’ He replied, ‘Paid, but the local farmers ususally add several colourful phrases.’ I didn’t know any but we managed to come to an understanding on the matter.