HORSES, DOGS & ME – ANDREA BUSFIELD

Meet our new blogger, renowned author Andrea Busfield, whose childhood dream of owning a dog came true in her thirties and finally a horse in her early forties. It quickly became an obsession that (she says) turned her from a financially comfortable career woman into a (self-confessed) stony-broke horse bore. And she’s never been happier . . .

After living in various locations around the world during her career as a journalist, Andrea lives with her six dogs in Cyprus, where she spends her time writing novels, teaching creative writing, and riding her two beloved horses.

Each month, Andrea will be writing a blog about her life with her horses and dogs. “Horses, Dogs and Me”

We begin with . . .

01 September 2019

My House of Dogs and Dust

A little over thirteen years ago I walked into a Kabul rescue shelter looking for a ‘wolf’ and somehow managed to come home with a mangy six-month-old puppy instead. Due to her skin condition, I called her Blister.

Blister had been rescued from the street by an American soldier, along with five other siblings who all sadly died, and on the short drive home she threw up a number of times in the back of my driver’s car. This pretty much set the tone for our first year together.

Strangely enough, toilet training was never an issue, Blister was and still is – thank God – a very intelligent dog, something I discovered after returning home one night to find she had not only opened all the cupboard doors in the kitchen but also buried the entire contents of those cupboards in the garden.

A number of mobile phones were also lost to the garden, heels were detached from shoes on an almost weekly basis and favourite keepsakes were damaged beyond all recognition. Yet I loved her.

I loved her from the moment I brought her home.

In that first year together, we bonded over breakfast as our windows rattled to a bomb blast at the Ministry of Interior, we survived the oil burner blowing up in our bedroom, and we braved packs of wild dogs as we strolled around the streets of Kabul, much to the horror of my friends in the security business.

Then, when Blister was kidnapped, I finally decided enough was enough – we both had to leave.

It was a teenage boy who held my dog for ransom after she escaped from the house while I was away in the UK. My Afghan helper was canny and managed to get Blister back with no dollars exchanging hands, but when I discovered what had happened, I went ballistic. I immediately went in search of the boy, my long hair free of any scarf and my hands wielding a police baton I’d picked up from the German PX. I didn’t find him, but I caused enough of a scene for the word to get around, and the boy had the good sense to stay away from the area after that.

Now I’ve calmed down, I mainly remember this as an unfortunate incident – I understand how poverty can drive people to desperate acts – but this was not the world I wanted for my dog, and so I made plans to get us out of Afghanistan. Of course, this was not as easy as it sounds thanks to various animal export laws.

So, to cut a long story short, I got a job in Qatar for a year. Blister and I then travelled to Pakistan for a week (where we found possibly the only dog-friendly hotel in the whole of Islamabad), and once her paperwork was in order, we moved to Qatar, where she could get a rabies vaccination that would allow her entry into Europe (though not the UK).

From Qatar, we moved to Cyprus, then to Austria, took holidays in France and even took a road trip to Croatia after my then-boyfriend annoyed me at Christmas, and I walked out of the house with Blister and the turkey.

In fact, it’s highly possible that Blister is actually the best-travelled dog to come out of Afghanistan.

Today, we live in Cyprus and share our home with five more rescue dogs – Alfie, El Disco Bastardos, Walter Pickle, Bonnie and Target. I also have two horses, an off-the-track thoroughbred called Lucky and an Andalusian mare called Mina.

It’s not a conventional life by any stretch of the imagination – and we no doubt trouble the Aqueos shop more than most – but it’s a life filled with love in our home of dogs and dust.