Louise O'Neill: 'Meet the new addition to our family'

Cooper investigates Louise O'Neill's Christmas tree

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions last year? Did you stumble across the list at some point in 2020, laughing hollowly as you saw your vows to travel more (ha), to have more patience with your kids (I’ll take a wild guess that home schooling soon put paid to that) and to eat less sugar (yet another batch of cookies are baking, how about you?). 

I was about to start building work on my own place in January and my boyfriend and I decided that when the renovation was complete, we would be ready to take the next step. No, not that next step. We were going to get a dog.

Our last family pet was a miniature Yorkshire Terrier who died in 2016. I was hoping to find a dog with a similar personality – placid, gentle, amenable to cuddles. My boyfriend, on the other hand, kept throwing around words like ‘energetic!’ and ‘golden retriever’, only to be reminded that a) the house is basically an apartment with pretensions and b) “who will be walking this giant dog twenty times a day? Me, I suppose!” (The metamorphosis into my mother is happening at an alarming rate.) 

Cut to March. The country has been told to stay at home and suddenly it seemed like everyone decided this would be the perfect year for them to adopt a pet too. Any time a new photo was posted on a rescue’s social media page, I would email immediately, only to be told that I was the 57th person to apply for the dog in question. 

After months of rejection, we began to wonder if we should just buy a dog, through an ethical breeder of course… but then we saw the prices. “€1800 for a cockapoo!” I texted my boyfriend. “And €3000 for that English Bulldog I fell in love with.” 

It seemed a lot of money to spend when there were so many dogs in shelters, needing homes, and besides that, we would be forced to lie and pretend he was a rescue puppy anyway. It was either that or face the ire of my sister and her partner, who’d adopted their dog two years previously and were passionate about #AdoptDontShop. 

Luckily, we were saved when Lorna, one of the amazing people at the C.S.P.C.A, took pity on us and promised she would help us. She emailed me in October with a photo of a Corgi-Collie mix and said – I think this might be the one for you. He wasn’t exactly what I was looking for; he was too big and he shed, I realised I would probably be covered in dog hair for approximately fifteen years. But as soon as I saw him, I loved him. And that was that. He was mine and I was his.

Cooper has been with us for two months now and it hasn’t always been easy. He gets nervous, and he barks ferociously at anyone that passes the window. 

He lunges at cars and he woke me at 3am because he saw something – a fox? a cat? – outside and wasn’t letting this intruder come anywhere near us. 

When I woke another morning to find that he’d had violent diarrhoea and not on the wooden floor, which would be easy to clean up, but all over my beautiful new rug, I burst into tears. I rang Richard, crying. “We were supposed to do this together!” I wailed, as if he was personally responsible for the Covid Restrictions.

“It’s too hard on my own!” But then Cooper looked up at me with his big, sad eyes, as if he knew that it had been him who’d made me cry and he was very, very sorry, and I told myself to cop on. He didn’t do it on purpose and this was life. I just had to get on with it.

And there are so many wonderful things about having a dog! I’ve never walked so much in life; my pedometer sends me messages like YOU ARE WALKING FIVE TIMES MORE THAN THIS TIME LAST YEAR, like your bank does when you’re abroad and there’s some ‘suspicious activity’ on your account. 

Cooper: 'big sad eyes'

It’s lovely coming down to the kitchen every morning and to find Cooper waiting, turning over so I can give him a belly rub. He loves a cuddle, nestling on my lap like a baby when I watch TV, and I’ve never had a dog who is so devoted. Our last dog loved everyone, he would have happily left with any random stranger and never looked back, but Cooper is unsettled if I’m out of sight for too long, his tail wagging excitedly when he sees me again. 

My boyfriend and I made the decision to adopt this dog together, but due to the restrictions, he still hasn’t met Cooper in real life. When we FaceTime, he tolerates talking to ‘Mama’ for approximately five minutes (yes, we are those people) before asking to be put onto Cooper. Inter-county travel is allowed again, and Richard is travelling to Clonakilty for Christmas. 

Will Cooper see Richard as an interloper? Or will he – gasp! –decide that Mama is superfluous to requirements now and devote himself entirely to the new man in his life? To be continued… 

Louise Says:

Donate: Animal Rescue Centres have been doing incredible work this year under very difficult circumstances. I’m indebted to the C.S.P.C.A but the West Cork Animal Welfare were so helpful too. Donate to your local shelter if you can.