It sounds lovely, a new canine companion for the old boy so he won’t be lonely any more. Of course they’ll get along, he’s such a sweetheart, when he isn’t up to the usual Airedale mischief. Unfortunately it doesn’t always go so smoothly, as we found out when we brought 7 month-old Katy home to live with us and 4-year-old Fred.

For a start, Katy is small and basically quite timid. Fred is about as big as male dales get and although desexed at six months, still quite the ladies man. Nature’s hormones conspire to overcome all obstacles to ensure the continuation of each species, but what happened next was more a case of ‘fatal attraction’.

Admittedly Katy is quite beautiful and Fred couldn’t keep his eyes, or his nose, off her. He tried to mount her almost the minute she arrived and was so persistent that the poor girl was scared out of her wits. Then he’d follow her about, herding her so she couldn’t explore her new home properly, and try to hook his leg under hers to trip her up and have his wicked way.

Inside or outside it was the same, Fred just wouldn’t give up. If we locked him out to give her some peace he’d bang on the door and howl. If we locked her in her crate he’d climb on top of it trying to get to her or scratch her through the wire. When we locked him in the laundry at night as was usual, he almost broke the door down and yelped for hours. We hardly got any sleep.

Poor Katy, poor us! After 48 hours of this we were frantic. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to return her to the breeders as we were as besotted with her as Fred was. But what to do? The breeders and more experienced Airedalers thought it was just a case of Fred asserting his dominance and that things would soon settle down.

Wrong! By the 3rd day Fred had almost worn himself out but not quite. Katy had discovered that the only way to avoid his attentions was to keep moving, so Fred, who was distinctly out of shape from his lazy ‘only child’ existence, had to keep pursuing her, even though he was showing all the signs of exhaustion. In that sense, it WAS funny, watching Freddy Fatbum lumbering along behind this cute little ballerina, who out-manouvred him at every turn. When they would finally stop to rest, Fred’s tongue would be hanging out and he’d be struggling to keep his eyes open. I’ve never seen him look so tired and I was beginning to worry that he might collapse. So we called the vet for advice.

“Desexed males who are still mounting need hormonal help” he said. “And the female will need to be spayed straight away.” Fred was given two shots of female hormone to calm his raging desires and booked into a kennel for a few days. Katy had her operation and spent a few quiet days alone with us to recover.

When Fred came home he was still determined but a bit less frenzied, so off to the vet’s he went for a booster hormone shot. This tided him over till Katy’s body stopped producing the hormones that had sent him crazy, which took another couple of days. I must add here that Katy wasn’t in heat, it was just that Fred had no doubt as to why his parents had brought him this pretty young female and was determined to fulfil his destiny.

By the third week peace eventually reigned and they began to play together like pals, practising biteyface and chasies and I-can-beat-you-to-the-tennis-ball. We heaved a huge sigh of relief. We finally knew the end was in sight when energetic little Katy had tired Fred out so much with her playfulness that he crawled into her crate to escape from her.

A year has passed now and these days Katy’s idea of a good game is to dare Fred to chase her... if he has the energy, of course. On the rare occasions he does catch her, all he does is bite her back leg and play-growl. They love to go walking together on the double lead and Katy is happy to run about on her own during the day while Fred (also known as Capt’n Snooze) sleeps in his favourite armchair.