Around half the dogs who come to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home are strays. Abandoned and lost dogs found wandering alone get picked up by local authority wardens; if they remain unclaimed, they are brought to a rescue centre such as Battersea for rehoming.
If no owner claims a dog within seven days it becomes the property of Battersea, and can be considered for rehoming. Battersea aims never to turn away a dog in need regardless of breed, medical condition or temperament, and nearly 6,000 dogs come through the home’s doors every year. For the staff in our intake department, who first meet the dogs when they arrive, one of the most rewarding things is seeing a nervous or neglected dog regain its confidence over the following weeks and trot off through the gates with its new owners.
For those dogs who may have suffered in their past life, it can take the love of a new owner to make it through. But it’s worth remembering that it’s a two-way process, and the love of a good dog can also help a person to get through the toughest of times, as Ben Harrison found out.
When I was nine I was pretty much like any other kid my age. I loved football and wanted nothing more than to be a professional footballer. I had great friends at school. I was confident and energetic and didn’t have a care in the world. But before I turned ten all that was to change, and it would take a miracle to get me through it.
During the summer holidays, Mum, Dad, my older sister Sophie and I used to go to a caravan park with close family friends who had kids my age. It was a very active holiday. There were swimming pools and we would all cycle around together and generally have the run of the campsite. That summer, though, I suddenly found I couldn’t keep up with the others like I usually did. Everyone was wheeling about on their bikes and yelling to each other, but I felt so tired that in the end I had to get off and walk.
Then I got this mosquito bite. I didn’t think anything of it at first. Normally they would just last a few days then go away. But this one grew really massive. I kept looking at it, and in the end it looked almost like a gunshot wound that had become infected. My friends marvelled at it, but I just felt sick and uncomfortable. I knew it wasn’t right.
When we got home, I tried to forget about it and carry on as normal, making out to everyone that I was OK. But after a few days I realized I wasn’t.
They don’t normally do blood tests for children at the GP but they made an exception in my case. The first blood tests came back OK, but they said they had to do more, so it became a waiting game. And while we waited, I began to feel worse. I couldn’t walk up the stairs any more. In the end, I couldn’t even lift my head off the pillow in the morning.
‘I’m really worried about him,’ I heard my mum say. ‘It’s like his body is just giving up.’
Eventually the test results came back.
‘Dermatomyositis,’ said the consultant.
‘Wow, what’s that?’ asked Mum.
‘It means his immune system has come on and hasn’t switched itself off. About a year ago or so, he probably had a cough or a cold which turned his immune system on and it hasn’t turned off like it normally would.’
‘So what do we do?’ she asked nervously. ‘Will it sort itself out?’
‘Well, that’s the tricky part. There’s no cure exactly. It’s a one in a million illness, so he’s very unlucky to get it. We just have to deal with the symptoms.’
In the end, this disease, which we didn’t have a clue about, started to attack my skin and muscles. My neck, legs, everything got weaker and weaker as my immune system attacked my body. I started getting rashes all over my arms and body too.
‘His eyes are bright red,’ said my mum when we went back to the consultant for more tests. ‘What does that mean?’
‘If you cut yourself,’ he told us, ‘the skin around the wound will go red; that’s your immune system sending antibodies there to heal it. In your case, it’s started attacking the corners of your eyes because it thinks it has to heal them.’
By this time, I looked really strange. As well as the redness, the drugs they put me on had changed the way I looked too. The steroids were the worst. They made my face puff up and completely changed my appearance. Even in the hospital, people would stare at me because I looked so odd. I felt very uncomfortable and began to lose my confidence.
In just a few weeks, my life had suddenly become a round of hospital trips and overnight stays. My old, carefree life seemed a million miles away. Now all I saw were drips and needles, and all I heard was the bleep of machinery and the clip clop of doctors’ and nurses’ shoes coming back and forth across the ward.
One night in the hospital, Mum was trying desperately to get me to sleep. I just couldn’t switch my mind off from worrying: Will I ever be able to play football again? Will I be able to run about like I used to?
‘What can I do? Just tell me,’ she said, as I moved around restlessly from side to side trying to sleep, to push the pain away. I could tell by now that she was exhausted too, from all the worry and the hospital trips. ‘What can I do to help you get to sleep happily?’ she asked, and stroked my forehead.
‘Promise to let me get a dog when I’m better,’ I said quietly.
‘All right, love. If that’s what you want,’ she replied.
I slept well in the end that night.
I’ve always liked dogs. My grandma had a dog called Jake, a Labrador, who I grew up with. To this day she’s still known as Grandma Jake, because we loved that dog so much. And across the road from where we lived our neighbours had a dog I would always play with, a Golden Retriever called Ginny.
That night in the hospital I dreamt about dogs, of playing with and cuddling up to my own dog. But when I woke up in the morning, I was still in the hospital ward. My heart sank.
‘Morning, Ben!’ said a particularly chirpy nurse. I did not feel chirpy.
‘Hold out your arm for me, would you?’ she said and started looking for a vein from which to extract some more blood. ‘Can’t seem to find it!’ she said, and started scrabbling about with the needle.
Mum and Dad were both there by now, at my bedside. They were trying to distract me as the nurse jabbed the needle all over the place, looking for a vein.
‘What would take your mind off it?’ asked Dad. ‘Let’s talk about something you’re looking forward to, when you get back home.’
‘How about the dog you’re getting me!’ I said, and looked over at Mum, who tensed up slightly.
‘Dog?’ asked Dad, and he looked at over at Mum too.
‘Well. We can talk about it. You know, as a family. Once you’re out,’ she said.
‘But you told me …’ I began.
‘There we go!’ said the nurse, triumphantly, as she finally found the vein.
And my parents were off the hook, for the moment.
Once Mum had said I could have a dog, though, I would not let the matter drop. And as soon as I was out of hospital I made it my life’s mission to convince my parents as soon as possible that a dog was the answer.
Both my mum and dad worked full-time, so when I was younger we couldn’t have a dog. But when I got ill, Mum realized she would have to give up her work as a childminder in order to look after me, because the doctors couldn’t stabilize the illness. They told us that there was a possibility it could take up to five years to return to a normal lifestyle. The other thing they had told us was that part of recovery from dermatomyositis is keeping fit. So having a dog suddenly didn’t seem so out of the question. But it was far from a done deal yet. There were still hospital trips and tests going on, and Mum and Dad had to think about it carefully before taking on another big responsibility.
For the time being, my life was just a constant round of hospital visits.
When Grandma found out I was sick, she bought me a PlayStation 3. They were brand new then, and I absolutely loved it. When the doctors came in to see me, I put it down at first, thinking they had come in to do tests. But there was one who used to come to see me just so he could play on my PlayStation! One day I said to this doctor, who was spending a lot of time on my ward, ‘Are you ever going to look at me?’ and he said: ‘When I’ve finished this game, when I’ve finished this game,’ his head down in my PS3. I was one of the most ‘tended to’ patients on the ward, because all the doctors wanted to play on my new machine.
I remember there was also a cleaner who used to come in every day and say exactly the same thing, like Groundhog Day. I’d be lying there, all swollen and red, and she’d come to clean around my bed. She’d kick open the door every day, like clockwork, and every day, as I was lying there with tubes everywhere, she’d say: ‘Is he better yet? Is he better yet?’ Every single day, when it was pretty clear I was nowhere near better! She was lovely, though, and it was comforting to see her every morning.
Another time, a consultant from another hospital came in, because the disease is so rare that they needed a second opinion. I was sitting in bed, with all my Chelsea FC football kit on. And the consultant walked in and the first thing he said was: ‘I’m not sure I can treat you if you’re a Chelsea fan, when I support Arsenal.’ So I said, quick as a flash, ‘I’m not sure I’m gonna let you treat me if you support Arsenal!’
It might seem like it would all be serious, being so ill in hospital, but it was the funny moments like these that got me through it in the end.
At other times, though, when reality kicked in, it was hard to laugh. I wanted to know what was going wrong with my body. I remember really hating all the tubes and injections. And I was confused a lot of the time because of the drugs. I also began to realize I wouldn’t be able to do everything I loved when I got out, like playing football.
One day I asked Mum: ‘Does this mean I won’t be a professional footballer, like Frank Lampard?’ That had really been my dream for years. And maybe some people wouldn’t tell the truth, to try to protect someone so young. But my mum decided to be honest with me.
‘Most little boys think they’re going to be a professional footballer,’ she said gently, ‘and in the end, most of them aren’t. Like that chef, on the telly, Gordon Ramsay, he wanted to be a footballer, and an injury stopped him. And now look at how successful he is.’
I’m glad Mum was honest. It helped me to deal with things, knowing she wasn’t hiding anything from me. But I also had to grow up quickly. When I went in to hospital I had been just a little kid in a football kit. By the time I came out, I was face to face with reality. This was life, I could no longer do the things I wanted to, and I had to deal with it.
With my football dream off the cards, I developed a new obsession. Dogs.
Ever since I had asked Mum for a dog, that night when I couldn’t sleep, I had thought about little other than how to bring my parents round to the idea. Our neighbours, the owners of Ginny the Retriever, heard about my new obsession and brought round a big book all about dogs for me. It listed all the different breeds and had loads of colourful pictures. I studied it nightly, and knew almost every breed in a matter of weeks.
Mum and Dad were cautious at first, though. They didn’t want to get a dog on a whim, and then realize they’d made a huge mistake. ‘It’s a big thing in the animal’s life as well, to be in a new home,’ Mum told me.
I heard them talking about it when they thought I was asleep one night.
‘Perhaps if we get a dog, it will help him get out more, though?’ said Dad.
‘I suppose it might be a distraction from all this illness. Something happy and fun for him, and for us.’
When she came up later to check on me, I showed Mum my research. I had been on the web for hours looking up dogs.
‘I’ve found these. On the Battersea site,’ I croaked.
‘What’s all this? You should be asleep by now,’ she said, tucking me in.
But I had laid out dozens of emails and pictures of all the dogs from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home on my bed.
‘Well, you certainly are persistent!’ she laughed.
I think she must have spoken to my dad again that night, because the next day she said we were going to Battersea, just to have a look.
I was so excited. All the way there in the car I talked about nothing else. What all the breeds were like, their histories, their characteristics. When we arrived I was even more excited about the shop. They gave me a sticker with a dog on it, and there were all kinds of stuffed toys and books about dogs and cats.
‘Let’s go and see some real animals, shall we?’ said Mum, dragging me away. ‘So what kind of dog did you have in mind, anyway?’
‘I’d like a Labrador, or actually maybe a German Shepherd. Or a Husky.’ I chattered all the way up in the lift.
‘Oh, they’re all way too big, though, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘We want something small, don’t we, so it’s not too much for you?’
I was still really weak at this point. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed at all, and even when I did, going out on a trip like this would take it out of me for days afterwards.
We walked towards a door that led to a long corridor with rows of dogs in their kennels; I could hear some of them barking and scratching. Because the door to the corridor opened somewhat across the first kennel, it was easy to miss that one. My mum had walked off to look for smaller dogs. But for some reason I stopped there, at the first kennel. Inside was a beautiful – and not particularly small – Lurcher, lying calmly on the floor, his head in his paws.
‘Hello, there. What’s your name?’ I asked, and he came over and leant by the side of the kennel. I stood there for ages, stroking his nose.
‘Come on, Ben!’ Mum was still peering in at all the little dogs further along.
‘This one’s sweet,’ she called out.
But I couldn’t stop looking at this lovely Lurcher.
His name on the kennel said ‘Harper’. I hadn’t come across him on my web searches.
‘How long have you been here, then?’ I asked and he nuzzled up against the bars.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Mum, coming back down the corridor. ‘What have you found?’
‘It’s a Lurcher. He’s nice.’
‘That’s a quite big breed, isn’t it?’
When she saw him, her face fell.
‘Oh, Ben. He is big. Look at him. He’s nearly as tall as you. Come on, let’s keep looking.’
I looked back at his little nose poking out as we walked away down the corridor.
There were lovely dogs there, and it was fun to look around, but I didn’t see anyone who compared to Harper that day. He was so gentle, and I couldn’t get the image of him out of my mind. The way he just leant against the door to be stroked. Even though I had thought I wanted a Husky, or something like that, I couldn’t really have coped with a big animal sprinting and leaping around.
From the moment we left Battersea that day, I could think of nothing but Harper, and making him part of our family.
All my classmates had gone back to school in September, but we knew by now that I wouldn’t be going back for a while. Even so, Mum thought it would be a good idea if I went into school one day, just to see all my school friends and let them know what was going on. We hadn’t realized quite how much my appearance had changed at that point. I was quite a skinny blond-haired boy with freckles before I got ill. But I’d swollen up so much since, I now had what they call a ‘moon-face’, and rashes everywhere. I really looked completely different and it would be quite a shock for all my friends. I was really nervous and scared of what they would think.
In the end, when we went on to the playground, they were all really nice, and rushed up and started asking all these questions. I had scars around my ears, and someone even asked me if I had had my ears pierced, which was quite funny. After that, my classmates sent me a huge Get Well card with comments like:
‘I’m most interested to hear what is wrong with you, if you could send me a letter back so I could look up what is wrong with you’.
Another one wrote about the school playground as if it had become some kind of war zone since I had left. Because I was so sporty I was quite good at keeping people motivated and playing together. ‘The groups are separated because you’re not here,’ the card read. ‘Some of the gang now hang out near the tree, the rest of us are by the shelter. It’s terrible.’
My mum found the card funny and sad at the same time. Their comments were all so kind, and so earnest. In the end she couldn’t look at the card any more because it kept making her cry.
As soon as I was well enough I was home tutored, and in my spare time it became my mission to go and see Harper the Lurcher at Battersea as often as I could. My sister Sophie had a friend who lived near the Battersea Old Windsor site, so whenever she went to see her, we’d always go to visit Harper on the way back. In the end we were going about two or three times a week, because I really didn’t have much else to do at that point. All the way there in the car I would talk about nothing but Harper. What will he be doing, what would we do when we got him? I must have driven Mum up the wall.
‘He might be gone, you know,’ she said as we drove up there one day. She didn’t want me to get my hopes up. There was every chance a family could have come and taken him. ‘You can’t set your sights on one dog,’ she said. ‘And Dad hasn’t even seen him yet.’
But every time we went Harper was still there, looking at me with those eyes.
There were all these new and different dogs. Lots of the animals I had seen would come and go, rehomed to different owners. But Harper was the one constant. It was terrible to leave him there every time.
After our visits, I would spend a lot of time on the internet, searching for information about Lurchers: what they eat, what their natures are. I even made a folder with all the information I had found catalogued in it. I drew a picture of a dog on the front cover, with a question mark under it. Harper? I came downstairs with the booklet and showed it to Mum and Dad. They laughed.
‘You really are taking this seriously, aren’t you?’ said Dad, flicking through all my notes.
When I had gone to bed, I heard them talking about it together in serious tones.
‘Maybe we should reserve him. Harper. Just in case.’ Mum sounded like she was starting to panic a bit. ‘You know, just in case he is the right dog for Ben. If we miss out on him, it could be a disaster, couldn’t it?’
‘Isn’t he too big, though? You said he would be too much.’ Dad still hadn’t seen Harper yet.
‘Well. I thought he was. But Ben seems to think he’s so gentle it’ll be all right. I’ve never seen him like this. So sure about something.’
‘You might be right,’ said Dad after a while. ‘I should come and see him. When I can get a chance with work. Before we decide. But if you can put a hold on him or something maybe that’s the thing to do.’
I was so excited I could hardly contain myself. We were one step closer.
When Battersea knew we were serious about getting a dog, they did a quick test to see what would be suitable for me. They asked questions about what we wanted, our home situation and so on. Then the woman who was interviewing us fed the information into their database. After a while she said, ‘We’ve found a match,’ and swung her computer round. There on the screen was a picture of Harper.
I couldn’t believe it, and neither could Mum. It was obviously meant to be.
Next we got to take Harper for a walk, to see how he reacted to us. It was hard at first, because he was quite reserved. I was really worried about whether he would accept us or not.
‘Look, he’s got scars on his legs. He looks like the walking wounded,’ said Mum as we took him around the Battersea grounds. ‘Like your bullet wounds.’
I had several scars since my illness where insect bites and other injuries hadn’t healed properly – we jokingly called them ‘bullet wounds’. And it was true, Harper had his scars too.
‘He was found on the golf course, just roaming, by a family out walking with their dogs,’ said the woman showing us around. ‘They had him for two days, to settle him down, and then they brought him in to us. He’s got what we think is at least one dog bite, at the front of his leg. It’s still a bit sore.’
I felt very sad, but even closer to Harper that day. We had both been through the wars. I was more sure than ever that he was the one. But we still had to get Dad down to Battersea, to make the final decision.
Not long after that, we were in Norfolk visiting our grandparents, and I found a toy model of a curled up Lurcher in a gift shop. I bought it and gave it to Dad.
‘It’s Harper,’ I said quietly and walked away. I think this was the final reminder to him of just how much I wanted this dog, and the next day he made an announcement:
‘I’ve been hearing so much about this Harper, I was thinking, why don’t we all go up and see him this weekend?’
‘Really?’ I asked.
‘Well, you haven’t stopped talking about him for weeks. So it’s the least we can do, isn’t it?’
So the following weekend we all went to Battersea as a family. I was clutching my Lurcher folder, as always, and I was really nervous about what my dad would think. What if he didn’t like him? That would be too much to bear.
‘Hello again, Ben,’ said the woman at the desk. I had been there so often everyone at Battersea knew me now. ‘Come to see Harper again, have you?’
‘Yes, my dad’s here this time,’ I told her, collecting yet another dog sticker for my fast-growing collection.
When they brought Harper out again, he was on his best behaviour. Almost as if he knew it was decision time.
‘He’s handsome, isn’t he?’ said Dad, and stroked his back. ‘Is he fully grown?’ he asked the woman from Battersea.
‘We’re not sure,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit big for a puppy. He’s not very toy-oriented. But I’m sure he’ll be a good learner.’
We took Harper to a paddock where you can let the dogs off the lead. He looked quite startled and just stood there. But then he wasn’t very good on the lead either, and got all tangled up as we walked back to the kennel. He looked up at us as if to say, ‘What do you want me to do now?’
‘Looks like he just needs a good family, don’t you think?’ said Dad. ‘And if you think he’s right for you, Ben, let’s go for it.’
I was so happy, I felt like I might burst. I gave Mum and Dad the biggest hug, and Harper too, of course. But this was only the beginning. Now we had to hope he would accept his new home with us.
Mum was nervous about taking him with us straight away, as it was Bonfire Night and she didn’t want him to associate our house with the frightening noise of fireworks. So we waited until the following Sunday to collect him. The first thing we did on the way back was stop at the common near our house. We had bought one of those really long leads that stretches, and when we got out of the car, Harper was so shocked by the open space, after being in a kennel for so long, that he just went mad and ran off at top speed. We hauled him back in, but it was clear he had no idea what to do.
When we got home, we put his bed in the living room, and he settled down quickly.
‘He seems to like it here, at least,’ said Dad, as Harper nestled down in his new bed and slept until morning.
Ever since I had been ill I hadn’t been able to get out of my own bed very easily. Mum would have to help me up when I was really weak. But the next day I leapt out of bed quicker than I ever had. I couldn’t wait to see Harper, and for once I didn’t think about the pain or my illness or anything else.
When Mum came down at about seven o’clock, I was already up, lying next to Harper on the floor.
‘I don’t believe it!’ she said. ‘You got down here on your own!’
‘I wanted to see Harper,’ I said, ‘to check he was OK.’ And from that day on, he was my main motivation. I finally had something else to think about, to care for, and, without me realizing it, I also had someone else to care for me.
When they diagnosed my illness, the doctors had given me an exercise routine to do every morning. It was supposed to help get me more physically fit, but some mornings I couldn’t find the motivation to do it. It just felt like a horrible chore. When I started walking with Harper, though, that soon became part of my recovery routine. I was exercising my legs, and my muscles, and it was no longer a struggle. It was just something that I wanted to do.
We started Harper off on short walks of about fifteen minutes. We pretty quickly got him used to being on the lead, and then when we let him off, he would run about quite happily. But we soon found out that Harper was terrified of other dogs. As soon as we saw one, he would collapse, curl up into a really small ball and just sit there, shaking. But if the dog came up to us he would jump about and try desperately to get away. It was quite distressing to watch; he was obviously terrified.
‘I wonder what happened to him, to make him so scared,’ said Mum.
But we didn’t know. We just knew that he’d been found wandering on the golf course, and that he had dog bites on his legs.
His other natural instinct was, when he saw a barbed wire fence, to make himself really small and try to fit underneath it. We wondered whether perhaps he had been trained as what they call a ‘lamping dog’, to go and fetch rabbits and things. And that maybe the bigger dogs had picked on him, but we’ll never really know. Whatever his past, a big part of the early mission with Harper was trying to build up his confidence and socialize him.
But I still had problems of my own to deal with. Although the walks were helping me to get gradually stronger, I was still very ill. My morning routine consisted of taking loads of drugs to try to stabilize the disease. And though sometimes I would leap out of bed to see Harper, other days I simply didn’t have the energy. Mum would have to come in and wake me up, and it could take hours just to get me up and dressed.
In the end, the doctors had decided to switch off my immune system and wait for my body to stop attacking itself. If they hadn’t done this I would have died. But I was now much more vulnerable to general sickness because I had no immune system, and I was taking so many different pills, I’m sure I must have rattled when I walked.
Mum even had to inject me every week. She had to learn how to use a proper syringe, which I absolutely dreaded. I had already had so many blood tests that I wasn’t really afraid of needles by now. But for some reason this particular injection was really painful. I would try everything I could to avoid it, hiding away from her under the duvet. It was a real battle for both of us.
In the end, Mum spoke to the consultant and he told her it was one of the most painful injections you can have. It’s not just the needle, it actually hurts when the liquid goes into you, because it’s so toxic. They had to give Mum all this special equipment, because if you spill anything it’s so dangerous that it can even be harmful to others.
The side effects from all the drugs were sometimes just as bad as the illness itself, and I got terrible stomach aches and sickness. I even had to avoid the sun, because if you get a sun-tan your immune system thinks your skin is being attacked and this would cause my condition to flare up.
So, all in all, I was living a far from normal life for a nine-year-old boy.
I soon began to realize that my illness wasn’t just affecting me. It was tough on our whole family. My parents were worried, Mum had given up work and my older sister Sophie was just starting grammar school. For about three weeks she was essentially living on her own, while I was in hospital. Mum spent all her time with me, and when Dad wasn’t at work he was visiting me too, so after school Sophie was left to her own devices a lot. And when I got out, she had actually moved into my bedroom, which was quite funny (although I didn’t think so at the time!). Having a dog brought us closer together, because it was like having a baby brother we could share. When we first got Harper home, Mum and Dad were out of the room when he came trotting in with a toilet roll in his mouth.
‘Ha-ha! Look at him,’ laughed Sophie. ‘He looks like that dog in the adverts.’
It was too much to resist and we played with him on the floor, and he got more and more excited as the toilet roll started to unravel.
‘Come on, Harper,’ said my sister, and she started filming it on her mobile. ‘Show us what you can do!’
The more excited he got, the more the toilet paper rolled out and around him and across the room, until in the end the dog and the whole living room were covered in toilet paper, with Harper just standing there in the middle of it all with his tongue hanging out. By that time we were in hysterics on the floor, and Mum and Dad heard us screaming with laughter.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Dad, and he came in from the kitchen to have a look. But it was so funny even he couldn’t get annoyed.
But most of the time, while Sophie was at school, I had all the hours of every day, and every week, to fill. I would do the walk with Harper in the morning if I was up to it, and schoolwork, but that would take it out of me. Then I would spend a lot of time watching movies, just to try to pass the time.
‘You must have watched that film about twenty times by now. Aren’t you bored of it?’ asked Mum one afternoon.
‘No.’ I said. It was the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I knew most of the lines by now. But the truth was, I was bored. Bored of seeing the same four walls every day. I missed my school friends, too.
Harper was invaluable, of course. He didn’t care what I looked like when I swelled up because of the steroids, and he always seemed to know when to be calm with me if I was weak, and when to energize me when I needed it. But it would have been nice to do something else, or at least be somewhere else.
‘Why don’t we take Harper for some training sessions?’ suggested Mum. ‘It would get you both out of the house. We could do it together.’
When we first brought Harper home he couldn’t have handled going to training classes. He was just too scared of other dogs. But after a few months he began to get a bit more confident. So I said, OK, why not give it a try. We got the number of a local trainer from Battersea and we took Harper down to a nearby village hall where they took the dogs around a little course set up in the hall.
We soon realized how convenient it was that Harper was absolutely obsessed with food. We had already used this to train him to come back to us in the garden, and out on our walks. But when we went to dog training, the instructor cut up pieces of juicy sausage and very easily used them to teach Harper all the proper commands like ‘sit’ and ‘lie down’. Although he would still sit apart from the other dogs, he was very well behaved. In fact, he was so chilled out that he didn’t really want to learn any of the really fancy things they tried to teach him, like going left and right. But he got the hang of all the important basics.
In the end, we did the course three times, because it was so much fun.
One of the things I enjoyed about being there was that while I was out training Harper, I wasn’t Ben the sick child. I was just Ben, training his dog. In the past, when people had found out about my illness, they would start talking to me as if I was about three years old, like I didn’t understand what they were saying. But in those training sessions it was a real relief to be treated as just another student.
In the lead up to Christmas we were really pacing it with the training and the walks, and Harper had a real breakthrough.
On the way home from a walk, Ginny, the Retriever across the road, ran over to meet us. She wasn’t aggressive at all, but I tried to get in quickly. I didn’t want Harper to get stressed out. Amazingly, though, he was absolutely fine. They met each other, and both remained very calm. This was the first dog Harper hadn’t reacted nervously to, and I knew then that we had really begun to socialize him.
When Christmas Day finally arrived, I pulled back my covers and took my stocking downstairs to open it with Harper. Snow was falling, which made it all doubly exciting.
‘You’re up early!’ said Mum, coming in to the room. ‘Did you find your stocking?’
But I hadn’t even opened it yet, because I was too busy watching Harper and the snow.
‘Look at that dog,’ said Mum, equally fascinated. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s ever seen snow before! And he’s grown so much since we bought him, too.’
I looked across at Harper, leaning against the window, pawing at those amazing snowflakes. And it was true, he was quite a bit bigger. So perhaps he had been just a puppy when we first saw him, after all.
Later that day, as we walked through the local woods, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. Sophie and I threw snowballs at each other, and ran around with the dog. I felt so completely happy to be there with my whole family on Harper’s first Christmas Day.
By the time we’d had Harper for a year, I was so much better from all the walking I’d been doing, I could kick a football again. This was made all the more exciting by the fact that Harper turned out to be a great footballer too. He could even head the ball while I kicked at goal.
The other thing Harper turned out to be pretty good at was trampolining. One day I got on the trampoline in our garden while Mum threw balls for me to catch. And Harper seemed to wonder why he wasn’t involved.
‘Fine. I’ll just get up on the trampoline and do it as well,’ he seemed to say. And Mum ended up having to throw balls for both of us! After that, every time I got on the trampoline, Harper would jump up there too.
This first year together was a real period of recovery for me, and for Harper too. He made some dog friends on our walks, and even got himself a girlfriend, or so I’m sure he’d like to think. She’s a huge Irish Setter called Kerry, who’s absolutely mental. They’re complete opposites in personality, but somehow they get on really well and sit and play together quite happily for hours. It was such a transformation from the quivering, nervous Harper we had first known. And after a while he also began to get a little bit famous.
The first thing was the local paper. I was due to start back at school in Year 6, and decided to do a ‘walk a dog to school day’ event with Harper. I got sponsorship from everyone on our street, and the local newspaper picked up on it. They came and took pictures and there was an article in the paper as we did the walk.
Unfortunately, after that I realized I wasn’t actually quite well enough to go back to school. But the media attention continued. The phone rang one day and Mum answered.
‘It’s Battersea,’ she whispered to me. ‘GMTV want us to go on the telly. “We’d love to get you on the sofa,” they said.’
‘Wow! What do you think, Harper?’ I asked and he wagged his tail.
A few days later, we were waiting in the hall when the doorbell rang. It wasn’t even light yet, because it was four o’clock in the morning.
‘Quickly. Get your coat on. Have you got his lead? The food?’ said Mum.
The car GMTV had sent all the way from London to come and collect us was waiting. It was a big posh black thing, but Harper was very good all the way there.
‘What do you think they’ll want me to say?’ I asked Mum, feeling a bit nervous.
‘I don’t know! Remember what they told you, though, to call it Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.’
Battersea had changed the name of their charity some years back to include cats in the title, and I had to remember that in my interview.
‘Well, I’m not going on that sofa, and that’s for sure,’ said Sophie. She was way too cool for breakfast television. ‘I’ll just wait in the wings and laugh at you lot.’
When we got to London, we drove right into the centre of town, along the Thames and past the Houses of Parliament, which was really exciting. They showed us through security and along lots of corridors towards the television studios, where people with walkie-talkies and headphones strode around urgently.
‘This is the Green Room,’ said a researcher, waving us into a room with lots of posh sofas and pot plants. ‘You can relax in here for a bit before the show. There will be one little interview first, to get a bit of a feel for your story. Then we’ll have a break, and then there’ll be another main interview after that with the presenters. Help yourself to those pastries, by the way,’ he said, pointing to an enormous bowl of croissants and cinnamon swirls on the table.
‘Two interviews!’ said Mum. ‘What do they want us to talk about?’
‘Oh, it’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘They’ll ask about you and the dog, and the boy, how it all happened. That kind of thing.’
When he left we all sat down, and poor Harper looked dolefully at the plate of croissants on the table. After a while he started to get a bit fidgety.
‘I’ll take him to somewhere he can do his business,’ said Mum. ‘Before we go on, so he doesn’t do it on the set.’
‘Where will you go?’ I asked.
‘I’ll improvise!’ she said, and smiled.
Sophie and I waited for what felt like ages, and I wondered where on earth they would go, in amongst all these corridors. Finally they came back just before we were due to go on.
‘I had to take him all the way out to the Embankment!’ Mum said, breathless from running.
Then the researcher came back. ‘You’re on. Follow me!’ he said with a wave of his arm. But it was all too much for poor Harper, and he leapt up and grabbed one of the croissants on the table. He was still gobbling it down when they started filming!
I was a bit nervous, thinking I’d be in front of so many people with all those cameras and lights. But since my time in hospital, talking to all the doctors, I was used to speaking to adults. And as soon as we got on the sofa it was surprisingly fun and easy. I told them how I got ill and how we got Harper, and how that had helped me to get fitter. Harper was so well behaved the whole time, and stood there looking very ‘handsome’, as Dad would say, for the cameras.
After about five minutes, they broke for the news, and we were about to go off, but there was a sudden commotion among the production crew.
‘What’s going on?’ mouthed Mum to me. ‘No idea!’ I whispered back. Then a man in headphones came over in a bit of a panic.
‘So sorry, er, would you mind terribly staying on? It’s just that it’s such a good story, and we’ve got a bit of a gap to fill now, in the news. Lost a satellite link, that kind of thing. You know how it is.’
‘Fine, no problem,’ I said. I was quite enjoying it by now.
So instead of coming back later for our main interview, we ended up doing one really long interview there and then. And I got to say ‘Battersea Dogs & Cats Home’ on several occasions. But as the time dragged on, I could tell Harper was getting a bit annoyed. Who were all these people rabbiting on, and all these lights and cameras moving about, he must have been wondering. It was meant to be about both of us, but in the end, he just lay there looking bored. And because we were the last interview of that day, the closing credits were a close-up of Harper with his head on his paws, asleep. When you remember that he’s a rescue dog, it was amazing how well he behaved that day.
It was fun to be in London and see a TV studio, but I was exhausted when we got home. It was probably the biggest thing I had done since I had been ill and I must have slept for Britain after that. And it wasn’t long before reality kicked in again.
As I was starting to feel a bit better, I had to think about school properly again. I had been home tutored for a while now, but I missed having a group of friends, and amazingly I even missed going to school! I really wanted to go to the local grammar school, because my sister was there and she always talked about how good it was. So, just before Year 7, I took my Eleven Plus exam. It was hard work having missed so much school, and I waited nervously for the results.
I knew when the letter had arrived, because it had the school insignia on the envelope. I had been watching the post like a hawk, and as soon as I saw it I ran to the doormat, picked it up before anyone else could get there and ran upstairs to my room.
‘I hope he got in,’ I heard Mum say. ‘After all he’s been through.’
I slid the paper out of the envelope and, five minutes later, I ran downstairs in my sister’s old school blazer. And they knew that I’d passed.
Starting at grammar school was great and I made some really good friends. Whereas my old primary school mates had seen me get ill, which I think was quite hard for them, here at this new school, this was just who I was. People accepted me and knew I couldn’t do everything other kids could. They knew my limits and were really helpful and kind. On field trips they kept an eye on me, and they all knew what to do if I got into any difficulties. There were additional perks for them too. When we went to Thorpe Park, I was allowed to jump the queue with them all, because queuing was so tiring for me with my illness. I became very popular after that, I can tell you!
Of course, Harper has been my other great friend over the past few years. I remember one time when I got sick, just after I had started school again. I was crying, and he came over to me and leant against me and wanted me to stroke him. I went upstairs and he followed me and lay on the bed comforting me, as I cried into my pillow. As well as companionship he’s done a lot with us too. We got him a dog passport and we took him to France on holiday. And he’s even been centre stage at Crufts!
It was during Battersea’s 150th anniversary year, and they wanted to get some stories about the dogs they’ve rescued, so we became one of the big stories of the event. I had to go right into the show ring and speak about Harper, and then we both did a big walk round the whole stadium. In the end we got a standing ovation, and I was so proud of how Harper held his own among all those pedigree dogs.
Since my childhood dreams of football stardom, I have had to face up to a few harsh realities. I know I won’t be a professional footballer now, but I’ve done some work experience at the local vets and know I’d love to work with animals when I’ve finished my A levels.
I know I’ve missed out on a lot of things other kids have experienced. It’s only a year since I stopped taking all the medication for my condition. Even now I miss a lot of school because I still get all kinds of infections and things. But I know one thing. If it wasn’t for Harper I’d never have got where I am today. After all, we grew up together and he was with me through thick and thin. Even recently, as I was getting stressed revising for my A levels, there was Harper next to me, with his head in my books, just chilling, and I thought how lucky I was. It’s no exaggeration to say that Harper has been the best thing that ever happened to me.
A few weeks ago I was on a school field trip. Harper hadn’t been very well before I left, but Mum and Dad had been to the vets and they thought it was something viral. When I got back from the trip, though, they told me that the vet had discovered my beloved friend had an inoperable tumour. I couldn’t believe there was nothing we could do and even went to the vets myself, because I just couldn’t believe that was it. The vet was very kind, explaining the inevitable, and I had to try to come to terms with it. But I didn’t and still haven’t. Just a few days later we had to say goodbye to Harper. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
Harper was my best friend. In fact, he was so much more than that I can’t put it into words. Every day that passes without his gentle presence, I feel the loss more deeply. I remember him beside me when I was at my weakest, bounding in to give me that extra energy, or lying calmly beside me when I just needed his special company.
Thank you Harper, for everything.
Afterword from the Harrison family:
Harper brought so much joy to our everyday lives and his unique character and unbounded love for us all was something that we all fed off; he was always there for each of us in our moments of need. The way he dealt with any situation made him a great ambassador for Battersea, and the love and support he gave to Ben was priceless. He is and always will be our beautiful boy and we miss him so much.