Looking after my boss’s dog has ended in tragedy

Trudy Tyler says goodbye to her boss’s hungry cockapoo – but it’s not the only animal that’ll be leaving her. By Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

No good deed goes unpunished. My fortnight in charge of my boss Bella’s cockapoo, Bear, ended in tragedy when the dog knocked my hamster’s cage off the kitchen table and gobbled the little ball of fluff up. At least, I think that’s what happened. I came into the kitchen to find the cage on the floor, its door burst open by the impact of hitting the tiles. Minky the hamster was nowhere to be seen and Bear was looking exceptionally guilty.

I prised open Bear’s jaws but found no fluff. There were no traces of blood either. If I had stumbled on a murder scene, it was a clean one and Bear’s guilty expression soon wore off. Still worried, I called my bestie Liz, who lives in the countryside, and explained the situation.

“That’s nature for you,” she said. “Red in tooth and claw.” She proceeded to describe how, while she and her husband were walking their dog a couple of days earlier, a bird of prey, startled out of a tree, had swooped low over their heads and dropped a rabbit right in front of them.