Putting the spring back into Freya

Putting the spring back into Freya

3 August 2016

A CHANCE meeting in a Seaforde grooming parlour proved to be love at first sight for Downpatrick woman Joan Gordon. 

Her heart melted when  she spotted a woebegone spaniel.

The dog had spent her short life starved, neglected and chained up.  She had been brought to the Council dog pound — and Corran kennels had taken her to the grooming parlour to be spruced up.    Joan Gordon was there when the dog came in.  “She was a mess.  She was painfully thin and her 

hair was all matted and lumpy,” recalls Joan.  

“I thought she deserves a better life — and my husband, Ken and I could give that to her,” she added.

It is now two months since the couple, who live on the Drumcullan Road, rescued the spaniel and there is a big change.  

“She has nicely filled out — there’s no bones sticking out any more.  She’s a lovely dog — she would climb inside your skin for affection if she could,” says Joan.  

She believes the dog spent her early life producing litters on a puppy farm. “I reckon she has been kept somewhere concrete, in the dark and being cruelly treated.  Even now, if she doesn’t understand what we want her to do, she lies down, cringing - as if she expects to be hammered.”

The couple’s own springer spaniel — who Joan had brought to the Perfect grooming parlour in Demesne Close for her regular beauty treatment — is 11 years old and they had resolved she was going to be their last dog. But that plan went out the window when Joan saw the 

Corran spaniel — who they’ve named Freya. 

Freya came into Corran kennels on the Tobercorran Road in the spring. Before they could rehome her, they had to have her checked by their vet, begin fattening her up and treat her for lice and fleas.

Charlie Marks of Corran says: “When she came in, she was in a shocking state.  She was starving —her spine was like a razor — she had a gash under her chin where she’d clearly been chained up and her ears were full of fleas.” 

He took the dog under his wing and within days she was following him about and had begun to put on weight. 

Then he took her to the Perfect grooming parlour so she would look good for a new owner — but it wasn’t Freya’s appearance which attracted Joan.    

“It was the look in her eyes. She looked lost and unloved.... like a dog who had given up on life — who did not have any hope of ever being happy,” says Joan.

• See the our It’s a Dog’s Life column rehoming unwanted canines on P31.