To celebrate Tazzie’s 1st Birthday, I’m sharing the article I wrote for the Success Stories section for The Underdog International.
My name is: Tazzie
I came from: Greece
Now I live in: South West London
My favourite things are: peanut butter, squeaky pigs, squirrels, catching flies, sniffing my brother’s bum, showing off my jewels like ‘balls in the air like – I don’t care’.
We were fostering for Underdog for a while when I saw Taz amongst a group of pups available for foster / adoption on their Instagram stories. When I saw his droopy ears and puppy eyes, I said to my husband: ‘This one’. And so he arrived after travelling 24 hours to our door – very tired and sleepy, like a little baby potato. I fell in love instantly.
Taz was very sweet and shy at first but very quickly, literally within a day or so, got used to his new two pals: Burger and Tanie. Burger is our Jack Russell / Staffie Cross and Tanie was our other foster doggie at the time. We had Burger growing up on his own and, boy, what a difference does it make to be able to let a pup learn from older dogs in the house. And so Tazzie’s education was swift: within 2 weeks he was toilet trained, walked pretty well on the lead and was copying Burger in absolutely everything. He is still copying his big brother, like when Burger cocks his leg against a particular tree, Taz is literally queuing to do the same.
And yes, Burger sometimes can be a bit grumpy and tells Tazzie off for being too boisterous and silly, and could he please behave like an adult now! But then also Tazzie makes Burger a little bit more joyous: they often chase each other around the kitchen table or in the park. Burger was always a mad running-around terrier but now, being 10 years old, sometimes he simple cannot be bothered. So it’s good to have Taz to move the fat boy around.
By now, Tazzie is 12 months old and well settled in our lives. Every day in the morning he’s very happy to see us and always give us a little lick on the face as greetings. He loves chasing squirrels but we try to convince him that tennis balls are way much better. I think we’re winning. He absolutely loves watching TV, especially films with horses or other dogs as actors. ‘The Mustang’ with Matthias Schoenaerts is his favourite. Other then that, he loves to sleep curled up in his bed with a smile on his face.