Pets & Animals

Treasured Animal: The Numerous Lives of Ginger Rogers — Not The Tap-Dancing One

The story of how a leggy female brushed with death, crossed the planet during the height of a pandemic, and eventually became my beloved companion.

Meet Ginger Rogers II.

Why Ginger Rogers, you may ask? Well, she came to me with the name Ginger. Perhaps because she’s a bit ginger in colour, or perhaps because she is pretty and delicate, with long, slender legs, sure-footed as a mountain goat, with a dancer’s gait in her trot. Besides this, she often puts her front legs into a beautiful and classic ballet position, as pictured below. Hence, she has now, care of moi, acquired the full name of Ginger Rogers The Second.

Ginger narrowly escaped death twice. Well, two times that I know of.

There may have been more in her first two years of life. Many more, possibly, for she lived as a stray on the streets of Cebu City in the Philippines. I imagine it’s a pretty hairy existence for any creature to live on the streets of an overcrowded and polluted city in South-East Asia, especially a dog, so who knows how many brushes with death she had then?

As I say, I have no idea about her first two years of life — I can only imagine. The two times she escaped death that I know of, I shall tell you about.

Sanctuary from the Rescue Centre

Ginger had been found and taken into a Street Dog Rescue Centre in Cebu City. The centre was run by volunteers and they took care of veterinary requirements, so the dogs were well looked after. However, the centre had a policy that, if a dog wasn’t adopted and taken off the centre’s hands within a year of the date he or she arrived, then the dog would be put to sleep.

My sister’s family moved to Cebu City in January 2015. Her area of work, together with her husband, was providing aid and support in regions hit by natural disasters, helping to restore infrastructure and create greater resilience in the event of another disaster. Over the previous fifteen years, they had moved four times.

Her three kids — then aged 14, 9, and 8 — were gutted at leaving their friends in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, which had been their home for the previous 6 years. To make their move a happier affair, my sister had promised that they could have a dog in their new home in the Philippines since they hadn’t been allowed one at the house they rented in Jogjakarta.

And so, on the day after they arrived, they went along to the Street Dog Rescue Centre to look for a dog to adopt.

There were lots of dogs to choose from. Too many. But one dog that stood out to them was a little female dog called Ginger. She was very quiet, gentle-natured, and pretty. She had been in the centre now for 358 days and was one week away from being put down.

My niece and nephews were not going to allow that to happen, and they took Ginger home.

That day, she escaped death by a week.

Five and a half years of happy Cebu days followed

Over the years that followed, until 2020, Ginger’s life was generally very happy.

Eleven months into her new life, her role as an only dog was no more, when Tommy Lee, a stray young female dog that the family found while on a short break away, came to live with them. Ginger became a little insecure, but gradually got used to the new company.

This was only the beginning of things to come. Tommy Lee became pregnant the following year and gave birth to seven puppies. Homes were found for five of them and the remaining two — Snowy and Brindle, so named because of their colouring — remained as part of the growing dog family.

The following year, there was a break-in to the family home during the night. The burglar stole laptops and mobile phones from the property. The family slept through the whole thing, and the dogs made no attempt to scare off the burglar. The family realised they needed an actual guard dog and this led to the adoption of a pure-bred female German Shepherd puppy, whom they called Meg.

The dog family had now grown to five.

2020 was the year that Ginger’s travels began

By 2020, the Filipino dog family had been at its full capacity of five for three happy years. They all loved one another and had the greatest fun when they were taken for trips to the river outside of Cebu. Suddenly, however, Covid started to spread rampantly around the world, a military lockdown took place across the Philippines, and these trips all stopped. For some time, even walks in the streets surrounding their home were not allowed.

The dogs grew depressed through house arrest, while the family navigated homeschooling and working. My sister kept an eye on the activity at the airport. The minute flights to Europe became available, five months following the beginning of the lockdown in August of 2020, she booked them all on, booked the dogs’ vaccinations and travel, and arranged shipping for all of their belongings.

The dog family was leaving the Philippines and moving to their forever home in France.

Forever home for most of them, but not for Ginger, it turns out.

Arriving in France

Ginger and Snowy were the two privileged members of the dog family. Both counting as ‘small dogs’, they were able to travel in cages on the same flight as their humans. The bigger ones, however, had to travel as ‘cargo’ and were put on a dedicated cargo flight, arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, around eight hours after the rest of the family had landed. They were soon all reunited in their fantastic new home, where they had several acres to run around, long walks to be had in the neighbourhood, and no more military checkpoints to contend with.

August is one of the hottest months in France, and the dogs’ new home was in the southern parts of the country, where the climate is more reliably sunny and hot. However, despite this fact, the thick, old stone walls of the farmhouse of what was once a large producer of Cognac grapes, made the house feel cold even in August to these poor Filipino dogs, who shivered incessantly on arrival.

Over the weeks that followed, the four longer-haired dogs grew used to the temperature, as their coats thickened to accommodate the change. Poor Ginger, however, with her short-haired whippet-like characteristics, struggled to stay warm enough when out of the warm sun and had to be dressed in doggy jumpers and coats.

This was the point at which my father began to consider Ginger to be comparable to well-known supermodels and always referred to her as ‘The Model’.

They had a new companion too. The house had a resident dog called Goose (the family planned to get a goose and call it Dog too, just to keep the balance), and so there were now six dogs and only four humans since the eldest son was now at university in Barcelona.

Spring returns but upheaval, injury, and isolation reigns for Ginger

The family made it through their first European winter. The first one ever for the children and five Filipino dogs, and the first in around eighteen years for the two adults. However, as Spring arrived, all hell broke loose when tempers rose one day.

I am not sure of the circumstances surrounding the angered dogs, but something had been winding them up and, as they were taken for a walk one evening, Meg, who had been winding Ginger up by licking her somewhat obsessively, retaliated to Ginger’s warning growl with unexpected aggression. Ginger was injured and required a visit to the vet to be stitched up.

She was isolated from the other dogs to allow her to recover but, once her wounds had healed, was allowed back with them. The intention was to supervise her and Meg at all times. However, somehow the two dogs were alone together in one of the barns one day and a second attack took place — this time much worse.

Poor Ginger needed stitches again but also had a badly injured, possibly broken, foot. This time she was going to need a lot more recovery time.

My sister started to consult a dog behavioural specialist, had Meg’s hormone levels checked and had her spayed, but the hormone levels turned out to be normal and not responsible for her aggression. They realised it was just bitch aggression and that they could no longer keep both dogs. One needed to be rehomed and my sister felt that Ginger would be the easiest to rehome since she was not the aggressive one.

I networked on her behalf to help her to find a home. Part of me wanted more than anything to take her on myself, but it didn’t seem sensible, since I already had a lot on my plate and not enough time. However, more and more we would come close to finding a new home for her and then the potential owners would decide against it for one reason or another. Eventually, I decided that we would take her.

As Ginger was seeming to recover, we were just starting to discuss how on earth we would manage to get Ginger from France to the UK with the Covid restrictions being extremely problematic at the time. And then, unexpectedly, Ginger managed to jump from a first-floor window in her desperation to join the other dogs one afternoon, and the worst attack of all happened.

Meg had sunk her teeth into Ginger’s head and then around her neck. Had she not been pulled off when she was, Ginger would likely have been killed in that attack.

Thankfully, although she was very shocked, she was okay otherwise. She was rushed back to the vet, stitched up again, and plans were laid to get her better again and ready for a trip to England.

That was Ginger’s second brush with death.

The globe-trotter set off again

With Covid restrictions as they were, there was no feasible way for either my sister or myself to cross the English channel to deliver or collect the dog. Thankfully there is a solution to every problem in these innovative days, and my sister discovered a Pet Taxi, who specialised in bringing pets back to the UK from Europe.

An extremely pricey option, but the only one available to get Ginger to her new home.

My sister and Ginger set off on the eight-hour drive to Calais, in the very north of France, where they met a lady called Jane, who ran the Pet Taxi Service. Jane, my sister, and I stayed in close contact, for I was to drive to meet them at the service station closest to the arrival point of the Channel Tunnel train, on which Jane would be bringing Ginger.

It was the weirdest thing knowing that my sister was just fifteen or so miles from me across the sea, and yet I still haven’t actually seen her in person since 2019. Meanwhile, I had never met Ginger in my life, and Ginger, well, she had no idea who I was, and no clue what was going on.

Ginger arrives in her forever home

Bless the little thing. When I took her from Jane, she was a thin, beaten-up waif of a dog, totally bewildered, and drained from the events of the previous few months.

We did the five-hour drive to our home, passing Stonehenge on our route — which Ginger gazed inquisitively at through the window — and arrived in our quiet little town by evening. She already understood that I was her new carer by the time we arrived, and she stuck close by me at all times. Our two cats scared her enough so that she knew that they were in charge, but she could always rely on me to come and rescue her.

On her first morning, as I drove my son to his school, she saw the vast expanse of beautiful Dartmoor, where we live, for the first time and gazed at it all in amazement. She had her first of many walks on Dartmoor that morning.

She was weak and timid in those days, never even letting out a bark. But, as she strengthened and became confident in her surroundings, she has come out of herself in many ways. She knows her favourite walking spots, becomes wildly excited when she sees the little sandy beaches that line the river where we walk, and runs around like a total lunatic, stopping to dig crazily in the sand, and barks loudly at nothing.

On the high moor, she regularly disappears amongst the stubby gorse bushes and I lose her completely for a while until I call her name and she appears in view, far in the distance, looking at me as if to say “what’s taking you so long?”

We also live near the sea and she has found a great deal of joy in exploring the beaches, especially as the sun goes down and the humans stop doing all that crazy swimming stuff!

She is much loved in our home and the kids absolutely adore her. She has a beautiful and gentle look on her face that beams swathes of gratitude and will roll onto her back in happiness, letting out little groans of delight when she receives the strokes and tummy rubs she so loves.

Ginger Rogers II is an absolute delight, and the most loving creature in the world. She has enriched our home tenfold, and even the cats struggle to disagree with that one. They think her bed is the bee’s knees and tuck into her biscuits when they fancy a change from their own.

She is treasured!

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