‘He has a sweet nature but a ferocious appetite. He’ll eat anything! What will you call him?’ she added, with laughter in her dark eyes. ‘Must it begin with an H? Herod?’ ‘Certainly not!’ I looked across the stretch of grass to where a trio of half-grown dogs, respectively black, brown and sandy yellow, were gambolling together. ‘Just because we called our dogs Hero and Hector,’ I said, ‘doesn’t mean we can’t have a different sort of name for this one. We’ll probably call him Sandy. We won’t mind his good appetite. It will make him grow quickly.’ Christina called to the animals and they came bounding towards us. I held out a hand to the sandy one and he responded at once, as if he had recognized me as his future owner. I stroked his smooth golden head. He was only half-mastiff and would never be as big as a pure-bred, but he would be quite big enough, as the size of his paws, which were like overstuffed cushions, made plain. He was still growing to fit them.
