Excerpt from Dylan's Tale

[Brian L Porter]

Following the release of Dylan's Tale, the second book in my Harry Porter's Dog Tales series, here's a short excerpt from the book, which I hope readers might enjoy. Dylan's Tale is available from Amazon.com and from the publisher at 4RV Publishing, and will soon be available from Amazon.co.uk for British readers to enjoy. For more information on the Dog Tales series please visit http://harry-porter.webs.com/ or visit Tilly's blog at http://tillyrescuedog.blogspot.com/

About the book:

Product Description
Dylan's Tale is the second in the series Harry Porter's Dog Tales, which tell the stories of seven dogs rescued from lives of abuse or neglect. The series began with Tilly's Tale, and the beautiful Bedlington Terrier, Dylan, soon joined Tilly. Dylan is a "posh" dog, meaning a pure breed with pedigree and proud heritage. He is the "aristocrat" of Porter's pack of rescue dogs.
Beaten, battered and abused for the first eleven months of his life, Dylan found a new lease of life after being rescued and placed in the loving warmth of Harry Porter's family of rescue dogs. With many hurdles to overcome, including fear of humans and with the threat of being beaten always in his mind, Dylan found love when he least expected it. Read his uplifting story in this, the second of Harry Porter's Dog Tales.
From the Author
Dylan's Tale is the second in my series, Harry Porter's Dog Tales, which relate the true life stories of the rescued dogs who share the home of me and my family. The aim of the books is to raise awareness of the plight of abused and neglected dogs, worldwide, and to highlight the wonderful work undertaken by sanctuaries, rescue organizations and the wonderful people who volunteer or work tirelessly for such organizations in an effort to relieve the suffering and neglect of such wonderful dogs, and who work so hard to help find them new and loving homes. The first book in the series, Tilly's Tale, was a double award winner in The Preditors and Editors Readers Polls, 2009, in the USA. Dylan is a Bedlington Terrier, and Tilly a Bedlington/Glen of Imaal Cross, and both dogs, like the others in 'Harry's pack' have harrowing though also uplifting tales to tell and each book is told as though written in each dog's own words. Please, enjoy Dylan's Tale.

Harry

 

Excerpt

Chapter 1

A Sad Puppy

 

Do you know what it’s like to wake up every day and be afraid? I did. I was just a few weeks old when I was taken
from my mother, a  tiny Bedlington
Terrier puppy, all cute and cuddly as puppies always are. Being a puppy at home
with my mother was just great. My two brothers and my sister would play with me
all day long until we’d get tired. Then we’d curl up beside Mum, and have a
good sleep. Mum would feed us all regularly, and we soon grew bigger and
stronger.

            Hey, hang on. Did someone out there say they don’t know what a Bedlington Terrier
is? Now, let me tell you that we are an old and noble breed, from the
North-East of England, and my ancestors were bred to run and sometimes to race,
(a good Bedlington can even outrun a greyhound, honestly), to hunt, and sadly,
some of my earliest ancestors were bred to fight, long before the cruel sport
of dog fighting was outlawed. We look a bit like a sheep, which makes people
think we’re all cute and cuddly. But in truth we’re terriers through and
through and it’s been said that we have the body of a lamb and the heart of a
lion. Sometimes we’re grey (like me) though humans call it blue for some
reason, and sometimes we can be brown and white, (they call it liver and
white), and sometimes we’re a creamy colour. That just shows how daft humans
can be doesn’t it? Can’t even get their colours right! Most Bedlingtons are
about eighteen inches tall, but, because of the things that happened to me when
I was

younger I’ve never grown up fully, so I’m about fifteen inches tall, a bit undersized, but, who cares? I’m a posh
dog, aloof and a little upper class, though at one time you’d never have known
it, which brings me back to my tale. After the warmth and the love and security
of living with my mother and my brothers and sisters, it came as quite a shock
when one day, the lady who looked after all of us took me from my mother and
sold me to a man, who, right from the time he got me back to his home, seemed
to enjoy making my life as miserable as possible. After the fun of my earliest
weeks of life, I now found that life had another side to it. From the day I was
taken to my new home, I knew little else but cruelty. I was fed very little,
just enough to keep me alive, and I was left to sleep in a cold outbuilding,
separate from the man’s house. I was tied by a long chain to a post in one
corner of the room, long enough to let me walk around the room and to reach my
bed. That bed was an old plastic dog basket which smelled of its previous
occupant, who I’d never met, but who’d died not long before I came along. The
other thing that I could smell in that basket, because dogs are very sensitive
and clever when it comes to smells, was fear. Whoever had slept in that bed
before me had probably known a life very much like the one I was unknowingly
about to endure.

            Now, you might wonder why people who are cruel to animals would go to the trouble of
paying a lot of money for a pedigree dog, or any dog come to that, just so they
can do such terrible things to them. I can’t give you an answer to that
question, as it’s one I’ve asked myself many times, without ever being able to
work out the reasons why humans do such things.

            I soon learned that the man who owned me wanted only one thing from me, obedience!
The trouble was, even when I did as I was trained to do, if I didn’t do it fast
enough, the man would hit me with a stick, a long hard one that he carried
around with him whenever he took me out in the fields with him. He wanted me to
chase and catch rabbits for him. I found that the chase came quite naturally to
me, I was a very fast runner as well, so the rabbits found it hard to outpace
me. The man was never happy though, and if I got too many tooth marks in the
rabbit’s body, or if the rabbit got away, as occasionally happened, it would
lead to another beating for me. I was still a puppy, but the man didn’t make
any allowances for that fact. I wanted to run and play and have fun with my
owner, but fun was never part of his plan for me.  I had to try and learn all kinds of strange
human words which I just didn’t understand. When I failed to do as he demanded
the man just grew angrier and angrier. So again, the stick came out, or
sometimes just the man’s foot with a thick leather boot attached to it. That
really hurt, and I’d lie at night in my bare bed, without a blanket, quivering
in fear, waiting for the next day to dawn, when I knew the beatings and the
shouting would begin all over again. The shouting was almost as bad as the
beatings, for the man had a fearfully loud voice and when he screamed at me for
some imagined indiscretion, it could quite hurt my little dog’s ears. I would
tremble whenever the man came towards me, and I knew that he hated me.

            In truth, I lived my life in constant fear of the man, and despite my proud
Bedlington heritage, instead of being a proud and noble dog, I grew more and
more miserable and unhappy with every passing day. I wished that I could run
away, and find a new home, somewhere
comfortable and safe, but I was never given the chance. The man was always around
in the daytime and at night of course, I was chained up to allow no chance of
escape.

            Sometimes, the man would bring his friends with him on his rabbit hunting expeditions, and they would bring their
own dogs with them. Those dogs were often large, vicious ones who would pick on
me, trying to bite me or jump on me in order to scare me. They’d been trained
by their human masters to be as cruel as the men themselves and they took
delight in terrifying me. It made me so sad. I never, ever, wagged my tail. I
was still a puppy but was never given the chance to act or play the way a puppy
should. I carried my head hung down, looking at the ground and I simply cowered
in fear whenever the man came near me. His friends were just as bad, making fun
of me because I wasn’t as big or as vicious as their own dogs. They would join
the man in teasing and hitting me, and I grew more miserable and dejected with
every passing day.

Bedlington terriers are unusual in that our coats never stop growing, and we need very
regular grooming and clipping. My owner didn’t care about my coat and I soon
took on a very bedraggled and unkempt appearance, with knots in my coat, My fur
covered most of my eyes, making it hard for me to see. That made the rabbit
hunting harder, and with each failed hunt the beatings increased. Even when I
yelped in pain from the force of his blows, the man didn’t stop hitting me. If
anything, my pitiful screams incensed him and made him lash out even harder.                                                       As I passed the
age of eleven months, my future looked very bleak, and very short. One day, I
knew for sure, the man would hit me so hard that I would be unable to get up.
When that time came, I had no doubts in my young mind that he would take that
opportunity to beat me until I was dead. Every night in my lonely bed, I would lie down and lick myself, trying to ease the pains that came from the constant abuse. My legs hurt constantly, and my sides would ache

I doubted very much that I would reach my first birthday. I was tired, weak and alone, and the days of fun and happiness that I knew as a tiny puppy were now a long-forgotten memory. As the days wore on and the kicks and beatings continued, I began to
long for the day when it would all end. When I could simply lay down, close my
eyes and never get up again. This was no life for a dog, or for any living
creature.

 

[Brian L Porter]

HI Kathi,

I'm so pleased you are going to get a copy, and I hope, if you enjoy it, you won't mind reviewing it on Amazon for me?  Hope your nephews and nieces love it too. Give them a kiss from Dylan. Sasha has her stitches out and is doing well, thanks, though we're having trouble trying to keep her quiet now. As you know, it's not in a puppy's nature to be quiet and still...lol

[Kathi]

I will read it, I am going to order it today.  Then I will share it with my neices and nephews.  Hope you are feeling better and hope Sasha is doing okay!

[Brian L Porter]

Hi Kathi,

Sorry to bring the tears on, but that's what I intended to do really. I hope you will one day read Dylan's book, and many other people too, and enjoy his story, from the harrowing early days to the happiness he now enjoys. If itmakes people think about the degree of dog abuse in the world, then Dylan's Tale will have succeeded.

[Kathi]

Oh my God Brian.  I am sitting here at work crying my eyes out.  Poor baby how can people be so horribly cruel?  The only redeeming factor to reading this excerpt is that I know Dylan is safe with you.  God bless you for all you do.

Hugs to you and the pups, Kathi