Pickles as Muse

My husband and I both had dogs as family pets growing up so I think we always knew we were going to get a dog one day. But we lived in the city at first, both working full-time, and it wouldn’t have been fair at that point to bring a dog into our lives with not enough time and not enough space – wait, we said, until the time is right. And so we moved out by the sea, and I was working part-time, but we had one, then two babies. It wouldn’t have been fair to get a dog then; we wouldn’t have been able to give it the attention it needed. So we continued to wait.

The time seemed right back in 2017. Our daughters were old enough to love and help take care of a dog, we were living close to beautiful countryside and coastal walks, we had a safe, enclosed garden, and although I still worked part-time, it was our own business with an office that could be dog-friendly. The rest of the time, I was at home, writing my first novel, hoping to one day be published.

So we went to our local rescue center with a fixed idea in mind – we were looking for a Collie or a Labrador, something big and bouncy. But while looking around, we fell in love… with the smallest Jack Russell Terrier we’d ever seen. Pickles is approximately two-thirds the size of our cat, definitely the smallest member of our household, but from the moment she came home with us, she was certainly the boss. (Of the humans anyway – among the animals, the cat is definitely the boss.)

She came already named, and Pickles seemed to suit her. We didn’t realize at the time that there had once been a very famous Pickles the dog who’d solved a crime and become a national hero. The original Pickles found the football World Cup after it was stolen in 1966. So more than fifty years later, Pickles, named after a crime-solving hero, came to live with a crime-writing Savage. A match made in heaven.

We expected our lives to change, that we’d be up with the sun, walking for miles. Instead, we’re up with the alarm, and Pickles totters downstairs an hour later and always insists on a lie-in at weekends. I got my first book deal the same year she came to live with us, and she modestly insists that’s all down to her – that rubbing her belly for luck is something we should all indulge in for hours every day.

She dictates my writing routine and attributes all my best ideas to herself. I can’t begin work until she’s had her morning walk, after which she’ll nap until lunchtime, which she signals by bringing her best toy to my desk and squeaking it incessantly until I give in and take a break. She allows me a couple more hours of writing in the afternoon and signals the end of the writing day by sitting on the back of the sofa barking at all the school children walking home until she spots her own small humans coming in.

I have to admit that, although she’s possibly inflated her self-importance a little, she is a wonderful muse. When it comes to solving plotting problems, I’ve realized I need to speculate out loud, but I don’t actually want anyone else offering solutions. I need to solve the problems myself. Talking to the wall never really did it for me, but Pickles is the perfect sounding board. I babble away as we walk through fields or along the beach, and as long as I throw a ball and have treats in my pocket, she’s prepared to listen quite happily until I solve my problems.

Pre-Pickles, I’d sit at my desk first thing and stare morosely at a blank screen for far too long. She taught me that I need that walk to prepare myself for the day – a fellow writer, who walks her dog on many of the same routes, calls it the plotting walk. My phone stays at home so that it’s just me, Pickles, and the countryside, and by the time we get home, I’m awake and inspired with plot holes filled and devilish twists fully formed in my mind and raring to go.

Looking back now, I wonder how I wrote anything before we adopted Pickles.

Vanessa Savage is a graphic designer and illustrator. She has twice been awarded a Writers’ Bursary by Literature Wales, most recently for A Woman in the Dark. She won the Myriad Editions First Crimes competition in 2016 and her work has been highly commended in the Yeovil International Fiction Prize, short listed for the Harry Bowling Prize, and the Caledonia Fiction Prize. She was longlisted for the Bath Novel Award.