A shaggy doggy story

This photo has nothing to do with the story. It is of a Cavapoo disputing a stick with a cockerpoo. "Its my birthday, so it must be mine." Says the one-year-old Cockerpoo...

In a break between shots, when I was art directing the photographs for an annual report, Michael the photographer and I got to chatting. Dogs came up, as they do, and he told me a story about his saluki.

He had been living and working in Kuwait when he acquired the dog. Eventually he decided to re-locate to the UK, as he had a ton of photographic equipment he and his Dutch girlfriend decided to drive back overland in his old Land Rover. The first leg of the journey involved driving to Jordan through Saudi Arabia. All was set for the journey, until the Saudis decided to solve a wild dog problem by shooting all dogs not proven to be owned by a Saudi.

Michael’s dog was dosed-up with sleeping pills and settled in the car, at the feet of his girlfriend, covered by a voluminous long skirt. They passed through the customs inspection without incident and somewhere along an otherwise deserted road the sleeping dog was carried to the back, hidden from the front seats by a curtain.

They were stopped by road block a thirty miles from the Jordanian border. A couple of stroppy heavily armed policemen took an age to inspect the paperwork. Suddenly the passport inspection was interrupted by the saluki, thrusting his head through the curtains and barking at the Saudi policemen.

‘What did you do?’ I asked. ‘Only one thing to do,’ said Michael, ‘my foot hit the accelerator and we took off as fast as I could.’