Korean, you say?

This is a brand new blog for a brand new phase of our lives. However I wrote it in May 2025 and never got around to publishing it. Must have seen a squirrel. I’m back here now because it’s our first anniversary tomorrow (24th April). 

Previous  blogs have followed our exploits in breeding Lusitano horses and taking up triathlon as one of the healthier (and marginally cheaper) options for our midlife crisis. This one is about dogs, and particularly our journey with our Korean rescue dogs, Annie and Tango.

It’s a changing of the guard; a reset, a new phase. We lost our Springador Willow to cancer a couple of years ago, and our Husky x Collie Fruit in early 2025 to vestibular, aged 13 and 15 respectively. We’ve had to say goodbye to our beloved cat Binky, who came to us as a stray back in 2010. It never gets any easier, that is certain. Our collection of little wooden boxes grows 😔

Fruit and Willow

We’ve been avidly trawling dog rescue sites for months. How do you find a new family member from a photo, particularly when there are so many dogs needing homes. 

Well. It turns out, in our case, I came across a photo that stopped me in my tracks and I just knew. This was that photo.

I can’t describe it, but I knew I had to have this dog. And thus began the journey!

Us being the sort of creatures that we are, it’s never quite as simple as it might be. We made the inquiry, I talked to the fosterer, Greg, and the deal was done. But you see, he had another Korean dog in foster, and the two of them get on really well. This was what sealed the deal.

So for better or for worse, we made enquiries about Tango as well. That’s him on the left.

What we know of their story is a very sad one; they were rescued from a dog meat farm in South Korea. Tango in particular is very traumatised, and we were under no illusions that this would be a big undertaking, and that we’d just made it way more complex by taking both at the same time. But in fairness, this is kind of how we roll, and always have done. Like the time I started my dressage career on a stallion, or the time I had to overcome my phobia of putting my face in the water to do my first triathlon. We have a lot of form in this area.

Mid-April we travelled the two and a half hours to Devon to meet them. Tango mostly stayed in his crate, which is very much his safety blanket. Anne was a bit more gregarious, though understandably jumpy. We didn’t want to just pitch up and bundle them in the car on the day of collection. The deal was done.