Patsy

"If ever I'm stopped in the street by someone who watches Great Welsh Roads, the first question is almost always about Patsy. I long ago got used to the idea that I was not the main event in the series, and that I had been thoroughly, and brilliantly, upstaged by a cheeky mongrel.  

Pats was way more professional than I've ever managed to be; she'd do three or four takes for a shot and trot happily through the same paces each time.  

In the van she was (mostly) calmness itself; and this from a dog who had reliably thrown up in noisy terror every time she went in a moving vehicle for the first couple of years that I had her. I lost count of the number of mates' cars that I cleaned dog vomit from.   Not that I ever did the same one twice - we were never asked again.

Pats was a truly special dog. I know every single dog owner thinks their pooch is the cleverest, sweetest, most brilliant hound that has ever been, but it's not just me, her totally biased keeper, who says so. Since her death, I've had so many people say to me that she was the loveliest dog they'd ever known - many of whom have had or still have dogs of their own, so that's nigh on canine treason. And not just the people that knew her: I've seen the transparent disappointment on people's faces when I've turned up to speak at some event or other, and not brought Patsy. And to be honest, I don't blame them for being a bit disgruntled. Pats was the real star. I was just the lucky one she hung out with for twelve and a half years.

Many other people have said what an effortless double act Patsy and I made. We took instantly to each other, and our mutual admiration never dimmed.

A few years ago, a friend was staying at mine, and in the kitchen one evening, as I was pottering around making Patsy's dinner and she was circling me with mounting excitement, my friend said, 'oh I do love to watch long-established couples with each other; they're so instinctive". To be honest, I was slightly put out - mildly offended even - by this remark. Pats and I a long-established couple? What was he trying to say? I didn't like the inference of that at all.

Next morning, I woke up and swung into my regular morning routine: downstairs, make tea, collect post and dog and head back to bed for a few minutes.   After finishing my tea, and with Pats happily snuggled into the bottom of the bed, I laid back down to doze for another forty winks.   Waking up an hour later, I found that Pats had progressed up the bed and was now by my side, her great head on the pillow next to mine, snoring away. A minute earlier, I'd have been doing the exact same; we must have looked a right sight.   I had to admit that my mate had a point. We were a long-in-the-tooth, made-for-each-other couple, who knew each other's moods and needs instinctively. It was nothing to be ashamed of. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Pats exploded into my life in the autumn of 1995. I was vaguely contemplating getting a dog sometime, but at that moment, it wasn't on the agenda. I was living in a lovely rented flat in south Birmingham where pets were expressly forbidden, and when, one day, a good friend said, 'I've seen just the dog for you,' I tried to ignore it.

This was a stray dog he'd seen a few times in a local park and scavenging round the bins of the nearby balti houses. To humour him, I went with him on a walk around the places he'd spotted her, but we failed to find anything. I was secretly quite relieved: at least we'd tried. Next day, there was a ring on the doorbell and there, on the doorstep, was my friend gleaming with messianic joy and, on the end of a piece of rope, a crazy-eyed, skinny, frantic mutt. We were inseparable from that moment on, even though I had to smuggle her in and out of the flat for a month or two, until I could find somewhere to move to that was OK with animals.

A year or so later, I bought my first camper van and we took to the road with a vengeance.   Still slightly over-excited and/or freaked-out by motor travel (though thankfully, the vomiting episodes had largely worn off), she adored van life.  

Her memory for places was phenomenal - it could be years between visits to a particular park or house, but she'd leap out and make for the exact same spot where she last left a stick or saw a squirrel or cat, all those years before. Certain roads could be guaranteed to get her excited in the same spot every time; she'd remember the doorway to friends' houses in terraced streets having not been there for aeons.   She was the perfect foil to a rambling writer.

In the winter of 1998/9, I was fortunate enough to have a job that paid me enough to take more or less the whole of the next spring and summer off, and just take to the road.  

I was really keen to take a look at Britain on the very cusp of the new millennium, and I travelled freely, as the mood and word of good events took me. Pats and I climbed mountains and slept on beaches, got cut off by snow and baked in sunshine, swam together in rivers and lakes, whooped it up at festivals and parties, sat by fires, basked in sunsets and met a stack of amazing people. A large proportion of the travels were in Wales: from parties in old quarries and remote farms to touring the Neolithic sites of Anglesey for a couple of weeks and taking in the National Eisteddfod. We had a ball.

The year 2000 dawned, and there was a strange optimism bubbling through my veins.   At the time of the Spring Equinox, a dear friend Paul, Patsy and I spent a week in a cottage in Abergynolwyn, a slate huddle beneath Cadair Idris.   There, the inevitable presented itself.   I'd been travelling in and writing about Wales (for the Rough Guide ) since 1992, and was now spending an ever increasing amount of time socially there too.   With a fit, fast dog by my side, I walked and walked the tracks, riverbanks, woods and peaks of the area; it was a quantum leap from the oily canal banks and scrubby parks that were the mainstay of our walks in Brum.   The time to move to Wales had finally come.

Without Pats, I would never have had the courage to uproot my life so comprehensively.   Most people make big moves like that with a partner: it's the ultimate dream of anyone feeling trapped in the burbs.   As a single gay man, I was well aware that I wasn't making life terribly easy for myself, but sometimes there are things you just have to do, and moving to rural mid Wales was definitely one of them.   But I couldn't have done it alone, without Patsy.   Our adventure really began then.

And what an adventure it turned out to be: nearly eight years of some of the greatest walks on Earth, two further camper vans and then, to cap it all, being paid to amble around the country, seeing incredible things and meeting astonishing people for Great Welsh Roads.  

I've had loads of people tell me how lucky Patsy was, to have been scooped off the streets of Birmingham and given a life of such excitement and variety. And so she was; but so was I.  

The spontaneous laughter, joy, companionship, enthusiasm, comfort, warmth and unequivocal love that that dog gave me, and those close to me, over those twelve plus years makes me feel luckier than any lottery winner.

I'm writing this a fortnight after she died. The house feels unbearably, achingly empty and quiet, and without our walks to punctuate it, the structure of my day has collapsed as if the stuffing has been kicked out of it. I have been truly knocked sideways by just how big the Patsy-sized hole in my life feels right now, but what else could I have expected from such a larger-than-life presence?

Pats was with me from my twenties to my forties, by my side mostly all day, every day.   I feel as if I've lost a limb, but I know the pain will slowly ease. Sleep well, cariad. You were the very best of companions on this often rocky journey.