Saving Socks

Written by Dr Alison Kamffer

Photography by Simply Small Art

I first met Socks when I went to do a locum visit in a local town. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon and was met by the housekeeper and this little Yorkshire terrier who came with a pair of socks in his mouth, which he gave to me. He then ran back into the house, had a pee in their hallway, and came back with more socks.

The family had gone away and I was staying in the house for the week. I soon realised that there were three other dogs, but those three had collars on, whereas this little Yorkie didn’t, so I was quite curious to find out what had happened.

During that week he was my complete shadow. Whenever I was at the house, he wouldn’t leave my side; he’d walk to the bathroom with me and wanted to sleep with me.

The family came back after a week and so I asked them what his story was. It turned out that the doctor that I was standing in for had had to save him from his owner, who was obviously in a seriously disturbed state and had tried to throttle him! She said they didn’t know what to do with him – they didn’t want him as they already had three dogs. So, of course, he came home with me!

I made a little bed for him in the back of the car for the 90-minute drive home, but within five minutes he was on my lap and stayed there, tucked under the seat belt for the whole drive. He immediately fitted in amazingly well with my other two dogs, a Bouvier-Poodle cross and a “Boomer” type. We called him Socks, obviously because of his penchant for socks.

His housetraining was something of a challenge, which I gather is typical Yorkie!

Socks has performed wonderfully at training, and he’s shown several people that a small terrier isn’t a “pocket handkerchief” but a proper dog. On a couple of occasions especially Yorkie puppies have arrived in people’s pockets, and then they see Socks doing his agility and running around with everybody and they realise that he’s actually a dog. He joined in training school and would train between others such as Boerbulls, Bullmastiffs, and German Shepherds.

He’s still wonderful at the age of 12-and-a-half years old, although now he has few medical problems: his kidneys aren’t working too well, and he’s had various skin troubles. He’s still hunting mice every day in and out of the bush by the dam where we walk and loves muddy puddles – as you can see in the photos. Despite that, he’ll not go outside in the rain!

I’ve had a couple of visitors that you’ll see in the photos who were scared of dogs. Socks goes and “looks after” them, so he now has quite a fan club! He’s also known to both vets and groomers in town as having the longest tongue in the West!

As one post on Facebook said: it’s the size of a loaf of bread but runs the household. He tells me if anybody else wants to go out at night to wee. He tells me that it’s time to wake up at about 05:30 in the morning because the birds are starting to sing, and he really does run the household. He’s just gorgeous and everybody loves him!