A dog has his Ruff day

I recently dug out a photograph of me trialling the family Panther – with Ruffdog as pillion passenger -taken when I was five. We both knew how to pose properly for the camera, it seems.

It was a nice sunny day late summer 1941, just after the all clear had sounded and Ruff had got over his disagreement with all the shocking bangs and sirens, when my father snapped our riding photograph in the garden. The bike would soon have to go as there was no petrol, and

the camera would follow as there were only two frames remaining on the very last roll of film.

Ruff, a friendly stray, had adopted our family on a London trolley bus journey to visit grandparents, just after a daylight air raid. It seemed

he wanted company, so stayed with us. His furious frustration with sirens, ack-acks and bombs always sent him rushing outside barking at the top of his voice. Unfortunately, he ran out too fast one night in the Little Blitz of early 1944, when the front door had been blown away, and he lost a leg to flying glass. We lost a great dog pal since he had to be put to sleep that same night.
Ruff knew everyone down our road and always enjoyed showing off and visiting them for attention. Fortunately, that last frame of film left in Dad’s camera three years before in 1941 had been used to take his portrait, which was then kept on our living room mantelpiece well into the 1970s. As you can see, he happily wore sunglasses and took to smoking a pipe for canine contentment, regardless of unholy bangs.

John Dawes, Hawkhurst, Kent.

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A dog has his Ruff day

I recently dug out a photograph of me trialling the family Panther – with Ruffdog as pillion passenger -taken when I was five. We both knew how to pose properly for the camera, it seems.

It was a nice sunny day late summer 1941, just after the all clear had sounded and Ruff had got over his disagreement with all the shocking bangs and sirens, when my father snapped our riding photograph in the garden. The bike would soon have to go as there was no petrol, and

the camera would follow as there were only two frames remaining on the very last roll of film.

Ruff, a friendly stray, had adopted our family on a London trolley bus journey to visit grandparents, just after a daylight air raid. It seemed

he wanted company, so stayed with us. His furious frustration with sirens, ack-acks and bombs always sent him rushing outside barking at the top of his voice. Unfortunately, he ran out too fast one night in the Little Blitz of early 1944, when the front door had been blown away, and he lost a leg to flying glass. We lost a great dog pal since he had to be put to sleep that same night.
Ruff knew everyone down our road and always enjoyed showing off and visiting them for attention. Fortunately, that last frame of film left in Dad’s camera three years before in 1941 had been used to take his portrait, which was then kept on our living room mantelpiece well into the 1970s. As you can see, he happily wore sunglasses and took to smoking a pipe for canine contentment, regardless of unholy bangs.

John Dawes, Hawkhurst, Kent.

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