The Story of Sir Lickalot

It has been mentioned in this household, by you know who, that TD’s name needs to change, not that TD is bad but it is a truly boring pseudonym in the world of blogs :)……..so having taken the suggestion ~~as good wives do~~ he is getting a name upgrade and from this day forth the dog formally known as TD will become Sir Lickalot. He licks……..a lot! Here’s his story

We got Sir Lickalot about four years ago, The King had said we were never getting a dog in the city, he was never picking up poop.(he does when he has to) We’d had many dogs over the years in Australia and when the last one died of cancer at 12, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to leave the country :).
I have always believed it is important for children to grow up with animals. You learn so much from them. I was trying to get us a dog. I missed having one but the answer was emphatically NO.

About this time, we met a lady who became a very close friend and she was involved in animal rescue and had her own website and was saving dogs.

http://www.lcarescue.org/

The King was telling me all about this and I decided to take a little look around the website. I felt sad for all those poor abused animals, then I came across this one …. Sir lickalot’s bio . The description read ‘…………….walks likes he’s drunk’, well this was fabulous and I showed the king saying you could go on inebriated walks together, thinking of course nothing would come of it as once again he’d convinced me his way was right. We were never having a dog (like we were never getting married and having kids 🙂 ). For the next few days we had silly chats in dog voices to each other and carried on as if we were dogs. It was silly and funny but nothing more… The next thing I knew the King had his computer set up on the table at dinner and was asking the kids what they thought about getting a dog and did they like this one?

Well you can imagine my surprise! The kids were very excited but I looked across the table at the king with an ‘Are you serious?’ look. The next thing out of his mouth was ….’So shall we go get him tomorrow after school?’ They were totally over the moon. Secretly, I was too.

We had to drive 2 hours to South Hampton on Long Island.When we got there it was agreed we would just foster him for now and see how it went. I fell in love immediately and said quietly to his carer that he wasn’t coming back. The poor little darling was only 10 months old and had been through so much. We drove home with him in the back of the car.. Grand Master D got to sit in the front so I could sit with Sir Lickalot in the back. It was a long drive home.

We had to be very gently and slow with him because he’d had so much trauma. He refused to go into the elevator, so for the first week I had to drag him in and drag him out but the trust built and he finally did it.

We have open rise stairs going to the lido deck and outside terrace which took more dragging and about 4 days to teach him to use. Up was ok , down was a problem. Over the years he’s perfected the ascent and decent .

A lot of love and patience have really helped him to become the best dog ever, yes he’s totally brain damaged but he has no idea there’s anything wrong with him. He is actually very intelligent. He just has a motor skills issue, hence the walking like a drunk.
He gets beaten up by other dogs but he’s the happiest boy ever. He’s very vocal, always talking to us but never barks. Only three times have we heard his deep voice.

He turned 5 last April and we can’t remember life without him.

If you ever get a chance to rescue an animal I highly recommend it. Our lives have been enriched by his presence tenfold.