Everyone who knows us understands how much these two have come to mean every bit as much to us as the old team, Rosie and Archie. I won’t lie though, our relationship with JD was difficult in the early days for a number of reasons, partly our mysery from the loss of Archie and the undue haste with which he was “replaced” by JD – needs must when you have the other love of your life dying of cancer and wasting away before your eyes because of her grief for her Archie. JD was, in that sense, a “mercy dog” – we got him to help Rosie to get over her grief and to make her feel she had to eat her food again. However hard it was for us to overcome our feelings, we needed him to help her. And he did. She lived for another six months of happy, fun-filled life before succumbing to the cancer and we grew to love him for those precious moments with her and, ultimately, we loved him just because he's him and he's lovely.

When he landed in our home he had a number of challenges, not least his propensity to charge down strangers and terrorise them. We believe it was a “fight” response to his past life and the cruelty he suffered. It caused us terrible difficulties in the early days and cost us a lot of money to take him to dog trainers to build his shattered confidence and to make him trust people.

It’s been four years since we took him on and in the last year or so he’s really developed confidence and charm. Today I knew his rehabilitation was complete. We were in our field playing tennis ball and he was charging down the field to grab a ball, not ten feet from the footpath that runs across the perimeter. Then the gate opened and a party of 20 or so adults came in, all with big back packs and full kit. He looked up. I called him. He looked back at me and came trotting back up the field then watched as they walked across, queued up to climb over the style and head off on their journey.

No peep. No barking. No charging them down. No standing in front of them barking like a demented terrorist. He was simply angelic. Regal almost. He got such a big hug from me and another later from DM to celebrate his rehabilitation. His composure was truly heroic given his past. What a complete star.

Note: Lola in the foreground of the pic is just being her usual fuss bandit self!