Poppy arrived in our lives on February 12th 2010. We were visiting friends who live about four hours from our home in the Axarquia area of Malaga province.

For one reason and another, we arrived at our friends’ place a day early than planned, and so we were there when the front door was opened first thing on the morning of the 12th. On the doorstep was a small, dirty, very thin, weak little creature. It seemed she had arrived during the night, and had fallen asleep on the doormat.

She was hungry and thirsty and, although a little timid, a bowl of Weetabix and water overcame her suspicion of us. A bath and a trip to the vet later, she had a name, a bowl, a bright red collar, a brush, and some special food to help build her up.

Fragrant, fluffy and tired after we accidentally bathed her in hair conditioner!

How did she arrive on the doorstep? We don’t know. Why was her arrival timed for exactly when we would be there for her? We have our suspicions. In any case, we knew immediately that she was going to join our family, and she was soon dubbed “The Dog of Destiny”

Since Poppy’s arrival, she has become a beautiful, sweet-natured, funny, happy and totally lovable member of our family and our community of friends. She has her own Facebook account, and many of her friends have suggested that she should write a book.

I am not convinced that she has the attention span to write a whole book – she has a lot of important dog stuff to do, things to sniff etc – but I think she may be able to manage occasional contributions to this blog about our lives together.

It seems that Poppy is not the only Dog of Destiny: the obvious domain name was already taken, so we chose instead El Perro del Destino. After all, we do live in Spain 🙂

Neither of us has ever had a blog before, so please be gentle with us as we start this new adventure together …