This story begins back in 1971 when I was 10 months old.  I was the youngest of 3 girls living in rainy England.  For reasons I didn’t understand at the time, what with being 10 months old and all, I was about to travel to a tropical land where I was to live primarily outside with dogs.  This is of course spoken in jest to some degree, but not entirely.  

Back in those days, when you lived in the mountains of Jamaica, there was of course no television and with the weather being as gorgeous as it was all year round, you tend not to spend too much time indoors.  In fact, I have absolutely no memory of what my house looked like inside even though I was 6 years old when I left to live in Canada.  I have memories galore of the gardens and the outside features of my house, but I can’t even tell you where the kitchen was.  I can tell you that my 3 dogs loved me to bits and we all took great pleasure in sitting down for a meal together.  Why my parents allowed me to eat dog food is beyond me, but I seem to be OK!  Fortunately, I have wonderful parents and they did not go as far as to allow me to sleep outside with the dogs.

With that said, Jamaica is why I am who I am today.  I don't particularly like being inside, and always feel great when I am alone and outside with my dogs.  Now, to get to the following story I had to give you some background on me so you can understand why I did what I did.

Jamaica is me and for those of you who lived in a far off land as a young child I’m sure you understand what I’m saying.  There are memories, smells, a sense of well being that you can’t seem to forget or ever want to forget and so I knew that one day I would return to Jamaica.  I thought it would be earlier than I did and some people thought that maybe I shouldn’t return so I could keep the memories alive and not be disappointed by change.  But I was determined to go and I finally did in 2009.  I brought my husband and kids, my Dad and his wife  and it was the best vacation of my life.  Now you must realize it was not your all inclusive tropical vacation fare.  Far from it.  In fact, the first place we stayed had no electricity or hot water and you lived along side what ever creatures decided to enter your thatched roof accommodations.  But my kids climbed coconut trees, we ate fruit from the tropical garden and every night we would listen to nothing but the wind.  

We would travel to places where we were definitely the only “tourists” for miles around and of course, we travelled back to the places I had been when I was a child.  One of those places was off the beaten path, as many places are in Jamaica.  It was a beach house and it was run down, but still standing.  We were greeted by the caretaker and his dog.  His dog was just a puppy.  I’m guessing 2 months old and he was nothing but bones and an infestation of insects.  My kids take after me and adore animals, so they plopped themselves down to meet and greet this adorable puppy.  The fact that someone was willing to physically touch him made him so happy he peed.  Just so you know, I’m not a completely negligent Mom and insisted my kids wash their hands after handling the pup.

And this is where this crazy story begins.  The puppy was not being fed by the owner and he looked somewhat embarrassed about it.  He said the pup followed him back to the beach house and he couldn’t afford to feed the little guy.  If this puppy had remained  in town, he probably would have survived on waste food from humans as many dogs do in Jamaica, but this puppy was out in the middle of nowhere with someone who didn’t want to feed him.  His face was about as cute as a face can be and, though absolutely starving, this puppy was happy and wagged his tail the minute one of us would glance over at him.  So there you have it!  From that point onwards, I knew he would be OK.  I didn’t do anything on the spot.  Instead, I made things complicated and waited to arrive home to Canada before I set the wheels in motion.

I arranged for his midnight rescue (just kidding), however, I did arrange for 2 people to travel from one side of the island to the other to search for the caretaker and his dog and to offer him $20.00 to purchase his puppy.  You must realize that I was spending a silly amount of money to hire these two people to look for a transient caretaker and his dog that may or may not be alive.  I was a mess back here in Canada.  I wanted desperately for everything to work out.

For some reason, everything was aligned that day and Lamar was rescued, brought to a no-kill Jamaican animal shelter (The Animal House) and soon began to grow much bigger than I ever thought he would.  Within 3 months, and many, many dollars later, Lamar was on a flight to Toronto where he stayed for 5 days with a wonderful volunteer.  He then boarded his flight to his forever home in New Westminster, BC.  I did not end up adopting him, but he did find a wonderful home with my best friend.  He is now a happy, healthy absolutely gorgeous 25 lb dog who came half way round the world to a family who couldn’t imagine their days without him.  He has been appropriately renamed Marley.