Panza was born in October 2017 and from the start he was pretty special – for starters in what is a very unusual occurrence he was the only puppy born to his Mum – Rosie. His name emerged because when he was born he weighed the best part of a kilo and was enormous for a new born Labrador puppy.

Seven weeks into his short life he suffered a terrible seizure and if it hadn’t been for the efforts of the emergency team at the Dick Vet Animal Hospital we would have lost him – which would have been a great loss. As it was, he recovered and quickly began to find his place in our small pack of dogs (Poppy, Rosie, Tilly and Honey).

He is the only boy in the pack and as such he quickly brought a whole new dynamic to the way the team interacted, not all of it good but he has such a relaxed nature that even the grumpiest of his aunts puts up with him. Which is rather a good thing because as he began to grow it became apparent that he was limping with his left leg. The poor chap was off to the vets again (pet insurance is the only way forward….) to be diagnosed with elbow dysplasia– in both fore legs (just how unlucky can one dog be……) 

What followed wasn’t fun, surgery on both legs and then the poor chap was lead walk only and lived in a cage for 3 months. After that there was a month of on lead walking and no normal dog running (we think Phil’s now regular visit to the physio was caused by hanging on to the 30 kilo monster as it dragged him around the field).

To his great credit, and this is the joy of Panza, he remained pretty calm and chilled about the whole thing (well we say that, we did return one day to discover that he had head-butted his way out of the cage and was asleep on the sofa). When challenged about this behaviour it didn’t need words to understand that Panza was saying ‘you can only take so much you know!’

Panza is now a year old, he is one of the happiest, bounciest and most relaxed dogs we have ever had the pleasure of living with and always has the capacity to make us smile with his enthusiasm for life. When you think of our gin just imagine the fun we have walking with him and his fellow Labradors – we are very lucky to have him.