My 'blog-writing' terrier wasn't just a pet – but one of the family

My Parson Russell Terrier had thousands of followers who were in agony when he died… But his legacy is that now dogs are recognised by law as beloved family members, which could help pets and their owners across the country

Everywhere you look in Angela Patmore’s small, neat, Somerset home are memories of Owen Parsnip. There’s a box of teeny military hats made by an expert armourer — tin hats, peaked hats, sailing hats — that Owen wore for his rabble-rousing speeches to thousands of fans on Facebook.

There are piles of books penned by Owen, with a little bit of help from Angela, 76. The walls are covered with portraits of him — some in military uniform, one in a smart bow tie, that arrived from fans all around the world after he passed away.

There are cuddly life-size Owens (one ear cocked, as his almost always was). Dinky pottery Owens. Felt Owens. Paper Owens. Hundreds of tiny four-legged figurines in glass cabinets.

‘Anyone who came to this house would assume I’m a nutcase, but his death generated an extraordinary response,’ says Angela. 

‘It was a bit like when Princess Diana died. He had thousands of followers and there were people crying and sending messages. It was very surprising.’

Everywhere you look in Angela Patmore’s small, neat, Somerset home are memories of Owen Parsnip

Even more so because, in case you haven’t guessed, Owen was a dog — a Parson Russell Terrier.

But not any old dog.

From the moment Angela met him — stinking, filthy and hurled unwanted out of the back of a van in a nature reserve where she was walking, back in 2011 — she knew he was special.

‘He was different. Arrogant. In charge and very intelligent,’ she says. ‘Everyone who met him fell under his influence, his love. It might sound silly, but I felt he was ambitious, with a status and stature.

‘He looked as if he wanted to do world-changing things.’

He was true to his bark. In his short but eventful life, Owen changed attitudes and spread joy. 

Not just for lovely Angela, for whom life has not always run smoothly, but for thousands of others. 

In death, he has somehow done even more. Injured in a car accident and treated for months before it was all too much, he set a legal precedent that could help countless other dogs and their owners with vets’ bills and kinder treatment by the courts.

Because, thanks to all he suffered and Angela’s tenacity in fighting for justice, dogs have now been recognised in an English Court, not just as mere property, or chattels — but also beloved family members, which could change the way doggy compensation is calculated.

First, however, let’s rewind to happier times when Angela, a writer, and Owen, an unwanted pup, first met. ‘We had an instant connection,’ she says. ‘Owen immediately took over possession of the house, and me!’

Owen was a dog — a Parson Russell Terrier. But not any old dog. From the moment Angela met him — she knew he was special

They went everywhere together — walks in the bluebell woods, to the beach, where Owen would bark at the sea in an effort to roll back the waves, trips to visit friends, holidays.

They even gave talks together, about the importance of rehoming rescue dogs. And, at home, where he had three beds of his own, but still slept on Angela’s, he would often look at her, hard. ‘He had so many facial expressions. I felt he was channelling a character, that he really had something to say,’ she says. So she set up a Facebook page under Owen’s name and wrote in his voice.

It was a bit of fun — in which Owen was the rabble-raising commander-in-chief of the Dog Revolutionary Army, inciting his fellow canines to rise up against their two-legged owners. Angela was the Adjutant.

And ‘dog soldiers’ — and owners — all around the world, joined in the fun. They lapped up Owen’s musings, his doggerel (geddit!) and sent in photos, videos and jokes about their doggy doings, often in miniature military hats, jackets and the odd pretend medal. If it sounds a touch off the wall, it was. But it was also joyful. People from all over the globe, connecting and making friends through their love of animals and humour.

And while a teeny bit eccentric, Angela is no fool. She has written endless books about everything from stress (she was once an external adviser to the Metropolitan Police), depression and sumo wrestling to biographies — of snooker player Alex Higgins and cricketer Mike Gatting. Plus one with Owen.

As a child suffering from chronic asthma she wasn’t allowed a dog. But since adulthood, she has worked with them, researched them, written about them and had endless dogs, mainly rescues.

‘I loved them all, but some dogs really stand out.’ Owen Parsnip was one of these.

Back in 2015, when Owen started limping and was diagnosed with a spinal tumour, many of his international community secretly clubbed together to contribute to his vets’ bills.

‘I didn’t ask them, they just did,’ says Angela, still marvelling. And later, they celebrated online when he was given a clean bill of health. So it goes without saying that when Owen and Angela were involved in a car accident on June 26, 2018, a ripple went round the ‘army’.

The crash came after a joyful morning of sprinting and barking on the beach in Pembrokeshire.

Angela and Owen were belted up in the back of a pal’s stationary car, when a huge 4×4 smashed into the back. Angela was injured — her back, neck and knee. But Owen was worse.

‘I knew something awful had happened to him,’ says Angela.

The force of the crash compacted his bowel, paralysed his hind legs and left him in a very sorry state. The prognosis was stark. Aged just six, he was incontinent and might never walk again. Initially, Angela tried celebrity vet Noel Fitzpatrick, but the waiting list for an op was far too long so he was operated on by someone else. And then a long and slow recuperation began.

They tried everything. Hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, anything the vets recommended. It sounds desperate now, but there were flashes of hope.

So she kept going — getting up three times a night to change his doggy diapers, bathing him, cuddling him, wheeling him around in a converted buggy — but always doing her best to balance his quality of life with the indignity of incontinence and doggy diapers.

‘I’d do anything for him so long as he wasn’t in pain,’ she says.

From the moment Angela met him — stinking, filthy and hurled unwanted out of the back of a van in a nature reserve where she was walking, back in 2011 — she knew he was special

And here’s perhaps the time to recognise how much these animals mean to Britain’s ten million dog owners. How they touch our hearts, sometimes in ways that even some humans can’t.

Because dogs have always had something extra. They have super powers that we can’t rationalise. They can sniff out cancer. They can detect landmines. They sit close when we’re ill and they know when we’ve had a rubbish day and need cheering up.

‘The bond between dogs and humans is the most unusual on the planet. It’s a symbiosis,’ says Angela. ‘A dog is the only animal that will, of its own volition, put itself in danger and even die for a human being. No other animal will do that.’

Perhaps they’ve got more sense. But the loyalty goes both ways.

So when, in February 2019, Owen Parsnip looked up at Angela, very hard with his beady eyes, she knew what he was saying.

‘He was having water therapy to help his back legs and he soiled the water and he looked at me as if to say: ‘What are you doing? I can’t do this.’ I know he didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want this any more.’

So she rang the vet. Sadly, it was not a peaceful farewell.

‘He knew what was happening,’ says Angela quietly. ‘He barked and snarled in protest and it took two injections to put him to sleep.’ She was left on her own, lying with him, arms around him as the life drained away.

‘I could see his eyes go dead and green like a semi-precious stone and I knew he’d gone,’ she says. ‘And after that . . . well, I didn’t do very well.’ She took a box of pills to bed with her and thought hard about the future. ‘I was tempted to take them. I was very low. But my friends rallied round. I’ve had some therapy, I’m still here, but I have bad days.’

Losing Owen wasn’t the only sad moment in Angela’s life. She’d said farewell to countless animals before him. And, monstrously, back in 2003, she lost six members of her family in a fire in Chingford, Essex.

But in many ways, she says, this felt harder.

‘Maybe because it was just him and me — it was like my partner in some way. My soul mate, even.’

But Angela dug deep and shook up her life by moving from Essex to Shropshire — ‘I’ve always loved Coleridge and he lived down the road’ — and tackled the claim for compensation which was convoluted.

Because, while the other driver admitted liability and the insurance company was happy to pay Angela’s medical bills, they refused to pay for much of Owen’s treatment — bills that tipped over £10,000 — on the basis they were disproportionate to his value.

Their premise was that a dog is a chattel — an item of property owned in the same manner as a bicycle or a piece of furniture. So they railed at Angela’s desperate attempts to rehabilitate him. 

‘They said he should have had some early treatment but then been euthanised as soon as possible,’ she says. They baulked at £70 for a vet bed to help him sleep better — something the judge dismissed as ‘penny-pinching’ — along with the physiotherapy that helped support his legs. But Angela — giving evidence by video from her immaculate kitchen, with a new rescue dog, Ned, at her feet, fought back.

‘I said: “Grief is grief. He’s my family.”‘

And who knows, perhaps it was the Spanish oil painting of Owen hanging on the wall behind her. Or maybe the judge was a dog lover. But he has now set a precedent that Angela hopes will help other dog lovers.

‘I can’t thank him enough for being a good human being,’ she says.

Of course, some people will read all this and think: ‘Very sad, but how ridiculous. It’s a bloody dog! What’s all the fuss about?’ A few might well dismiss her as ‘a nutcase’.

But Angela doesn’t care. Because she’s not. She’s clever, funny and interesting with lots of friends all over the world. And she just really, really loves dogs.

But most of all, Owen Parsnip. A very special dog indeed who, as he always intended, did world-changing things.

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