Shandy Tells Her Story

After many adventures in Zambia and then a whole new life in England, Shandy asked my mother Sylvia Lawrence to write her story - her biography. It wasn't that she could speak like a cartoon character. It was that my mother could understand exactly what she was saying. As Shandy herself put it "Some of us really do understand more or less exactly what humans are saying, and I'm one of those lucky ones. The problem is that even those of us who understand human talk can't actually talk back. So that's where telepathy comes in. That's how you understand me and how you can tell my story," she said to Sylvia, "but you'll need to explain this to the humans who read it because otherwise they won't believe this is really me!" Shandy was a wire haired terrier who was born and adventured in Zambia before she made the long and difficult transition to England. Where her brother Roly's adventures involved many dog friends, Shandy's were more focused on her family and the two very special dogs in her life: the tragic Great Dane Emerson and the indomitable rescue dog Mungo. Roly lived in remote bush country but Shandy lived in a more urban environment and eventually had her own puppies. She wasn't much of a mother! She preferred to be exploring the English countryside. Foxes, badgers, the three-legged squirrel she could never catch, stolen rides in taxis and buses, games on the beach... a very different life from Roly's but just as adventurous and told in just as personal a voice, with remarkable understanding, empathy and humour. They speak with intelligence too, not just to young readers but to the adults who read with them.