STARVED FOR DOG

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 May 1935, Page 12

STARVED FOR DOG

PET WHO DOES SHOPPING. - A woman invalid’s struggle to save money to buy a license for her dog, which does all her shopping, was revealed at Blackpool recently, when Miss Kathleen Alma Hutchinson, .of William-street, was summoned for keeping the dog without a license. Mr. Jacob Parkinson ,a local’solicitor, defended her in an honorary capacity, and the Mongrel Club, which helps dog-lovers unable to pay for licenses, offered to pay if she were fined, but the magistrates dismissed the case on payment of costs, which the Chief Constable, Mr. H. E. Derham, indicated he would pay. Mr. Parkinson said Miss Hutchinson was unable to go out, audlicr income was only 19 s 6d. pe rweek, out of which she paid 6d rent. “This dog does the shopping,” con-tinued-Mr. Parkinson. “Miss Hutchinson puts a note of her requirements in a bag and sends the dog along to the shop for the goods.” The Chief Constable said there was no fire at the house and Mi#s Hutchinson kept herself warn by wrapping up in a blanket. She was practically a skeleton. She had since bought a license out of her rent money. Miss Hutchinson, who has been an invalid since she was injured in a street accident nearly three years ago, is only a young woman, but her hair has turned white. She said: “He is a wonderful dog, a cross betwee na spaniel and a collie, and I do not know what I would do without him. I am alone here, and he is always doing little odds jobs about the house for me. I have gone short of food for as long as six weeks so that he shall" have the best that he deserves. He does all the shopping, visiting the butcher’s and the grocer’s, taking the money and my orders with him.”