We adopted Mimi in 2013 (I think!) when she was about a year old. Knowing her now and looking at the first photo we have of her (with the pink lead), I can see how terrified she was. She loves her routine and her people, and it takes her a while to warm up to other dogs – so suddenly finding herself in a strange place with strange dogs must have been particularly horrible for her.

Despite that, and despite being completely untrained, she tried so hard from the very start and she was always gentle with the kids. She learned really quickly and she wanted so much to be good. We hadn’t had a dog before so we were learning too.

She’s now been with us for eight years, and it’s been lovely to have her in the family. She keeps us all safe from small fluffy dogs (but not big dogs!), and she makes sure we all eat and go to bed on time, her favourite game is pretending to bite people’s toes, she loves to help our eldest practice music and will run to his room to sit on his books as soon as she hears him start, she has no interest at all in balls – but she has a favourite bucket, she loves all human beings and she almost never digs in the garden- but when she does it’s always the one thing I wish she’d left alone! She will also always go and sit with anyone who seems sad or ill, we call her Nurse Mimi.

We don’t know her history, we suspect she was loved but not given the training she needed and so was too much of a handful as she got bigger. She has a couple of odd habits which might be from her early life, or might just be her quirky personality.

She’s getting older now and a bit grey, but is still very playful. She had to have an operation on her knee recently but our brother in law was the surgeon so she felt safe and happy with him. She’s slowly getting back to normal now and she is very happy to be allowed to go upstairs again because that’s where her lookout is.

Thank you for all you do to find these dogs homes, you gave Mimi a very happy life and we wouldn’t be the same without her.