Aquila Children's Magazine AQUILA Magazine Best Bits | Page 90

NoT JuSt fOr cHrIsTmAs: ThE ViCtOrIaNs aNd aNiMaL ReScUe It’s true, of course: ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’. Those cuddly balls of fur will need feeding, exercising, training and grooming for years to come. Sadly, some people still forget that. Or perhaps they realise it, but for some reason or another, are unable to go on caring for their pets. These days, owners can take their pets to animal shelters where they have every chance of being rehomed. But that wasn’t always the case. ROYAL AFFECTION The most famous animal shelter is also the oldest. Battersea Dogs & Cats Home was founded in Victorian times, when people began to think seriously about how we treat animals. Queen Victoria herself treasured her pets. She had many during her long reign, from her childhood companion Dash, a King Charles spaniel, to her favourite little Pomeranian, Turi, in old age. DICKENS’ DUTIFUL DOGS Charles Dickens was already thirty years old when he got his first dog, Timber, but after that he always had dogs, sometimes several together. Once he got frostbite from walking a long way in the snow, and instead of bounding ahead in their usual lively way, his dogs Turk and Linda walked slowly and anxiously beside him as he limped home. He was deeply touched. It is hardly surprising, then, that he did something to help the many stray dogs that roamed London’s streets. As well as writing novels and Christmas stories, Dickens ran a popular weekly magazine called All the Year Round. One of the articles for the week of 2 August 1862 was entitled ‘Two Dog Shows’, and it compared a fashionable dog show held in Islington, north London, with a not-so-fashionable dogs’ home, recently founded in nearby Holloway. At the ‘Monster Dog Show’ more than a thousand dogs were displayed (including a whole pack of foxhounds, according to The Times of Saturday 2 August), and the writer saw many ‘beautiful and rare animals’, looking comically proud when they won prizes. But at the refuge there were only ‘the Lost Dogs of the Metropolis … poor vagrant homeless curs’, picked up from the roadside where they were dying of starvation. Like other contributions, the piece was anonymous, and, for many years, readers felt sure that Dickens had written it himself. It was great publicity for the dogs’ home. T’RIFFIC TEALBY In those days, not everyone thought it worthwhile to help strays. They thought the police should take them away and deal with them (you can imagine how)! But Mary Tealby, the middle-aged woman who had started the Holloway refuge in 1860, felt differently. After seeing a friend tending to an abandoned puppy, she found a nearby stable yard where she could take such dogs, feed them and bring them back to health. Sometimes, they were just lost. Seeing advertisements for the refuge, their owners arrived and were overjoyed to be reunited with their pets. More often, Mary was able to settle her dogs with new and loving owners. Thanks to continuing publicity, support grew. After all, the RSPCA had been founded as early as 1824, and attitudes to animals were changing. Other important people, like Emily Tennyson, sister of the great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, came forward to help. Before long, there were just too many dogs for the small stable yard. So in 1871 a larger space was found on the south side of London, at Battersea.