The Small Dog With a Big Personality Read Online Free PDF

Rats because cars were right there in front of him to chase. As soon as the soldiers had checked the car and it was driving away Rats would be there biting at the tyres. Most drivers realized he was there and moved away slowly, even though he followed them for a full 20 or 30 yards. But on one occasion, just after the arrival of the Queen’s Regiment, Rats chased one car too many. He had watched the car as the soldiers checked it over and then, as usual, as the car moved away, he ran in towards the wheels. Suddenly the car veered to the left and Rats disappeared under it.
    Yelping with pain the dog lay at the roadside. The soldiers saw what happened and dashed to Rats’s side. Corporal Ainsworth gathered Rats up and ran with him back to base. The dog’s left front leg was too damaged to be treated on site, and so the Queen’s Regimentarranged a helicopter to fly Rats to Battalion HQ at Bessbrook. From there he was transferred to the Maze Prison at Long Kesh where a team of veterinary surgeons waited to examine the patient. Rats had a broken leg and was lucky to have escaped with only one serious injury. No one knows if the driver deliberately drove into Rats or if it was a genuine accident. That could never be proven but it was important to the soldiers that their mascot received the best of attention and within a month his leg was as good as new.
    No sooner was Rats back on his feet than he was back to his old car-chasing antics. Maybe it would not have been so bad if he had limited his bad habits to chasing cars, because the day he chose to take on a bus was the day he needed stitches in his head. It was around this time that the RAF became reluctant to let him fly with them. They didn’t want to be responsible for any injury to Rats. After all, he was becoming far too important to the base to risk that. Although he hadn’t adopted any one particular friend amongst the men from the Queen’s Regiment, they all played their part in making sure the little dog was well taken care of.But there was one thing they had to change for their mascot – his passport to the skies. They knew how much he liked taking to the air and so they worked together to make sure that Rats was never left behind. No flight left without Rats being smuggling aboard inside someone’s jacket or a Bergen (backpack).
    ‘Rats was a member of the company so we were not going to leave him behind. If we were going somewhere, Rats was going too,’ recalls Major (now Colonel) Richard Graham, the company commander. ‘When you are in a situation where you are surrounded by adversity, a small item of happiness can take on huge significance. Rats was a small trace of happiness in adversity and for that he was very important to all of us.’
    When the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Highlanders arrived in Crossmaglen in August 1979 so did Corporal Joseph O’Neil. He was a Catholic and a family man and his tour of Northern Ireland had begun as his wife was about to have their third child. O’Neil had concerns about being in one of the most dangerous locations for any British serviceman at this time in his life but it was his job and, of course, he was just goingto get on with it. But it was the sight of Rats waiting to greet the advance party from the helicopter that interested O’Neil. He wasn’t expecting to see a dog in this God-forsaken place. For some reason the appearance of a small dog stuck in his mind and the next time he saw Rats, he was sleeping on the empty bunk of one of the corporals who had flown out that day. The man had played the mouth organ and other soldiers had said how Rats had liked the sound and often tried to join in, ‘singing’ along. O’Neil couldn’t play anything but he tried to entice Rats with a whistle. ‘Come on little fella…it’s alright…come over here.’ To the soldier’s surprise, Rats followed the sound of the whistle and settled on O’Neil’s bunk. It wasn’t really the soldier’s intention to invite the