I Swore I Wouldn’t Get a Dog. Then I Met Ginger

An ex-street dog covered in scars changed my mind in an instant

Ginger in her early days with me. All photos are the property of the author.

When Ginger came into my life, I had a long list of good reasons to not adopt a dog. In a nutshell, life was challenging me enough, and the thought of taking on more responsibility only filled me with dread.

As a single working mother of three, I had my work cut out. In 2020, the homeschooling challenges of COVID only exacerbated that. A couple of years prior, when the kids and I left the toxic place that was our family home, we’d spent eight months living between various friends’ and family’s spare bedrooms, sofas and caravans, until we managed to buy a poorly-maintained old property to house us.

By 2021, we were slowly renovating the house. My two cats had finally settled; once used only to rural living, where barely a car passed our house and we were surrounded by fields and moorland, they had taken a long, long time to adjust to town life; people walking immediately past our front door, and a noisy road to the side. Introducing a dog might throw us back into disarray.

There was, however, a tiny part of me that had always longed for the companionship of a dog.

But I was overwhelmed by life. Overwhelm took up every space and every corner of my world…