Puppy love

In December 2004, about two months after they first met, David realised he had fallen for Amanda. He decided it was time to ask her out on an official date and promised himself he would do so the next time he saw her. The moment came just a few days later, when Amanda and Georgie strolled past David’s apartment.

“It was about 6.30 in the morning,” remembers David with a smile. “We chatted for a while and then I just said, ‘Do you want to go out some time?’ Incredibly, I wasn’t nervous. Right from the beginning I felt comfortable with Amanda – far more than I had with other women. I’m not sure why, I just did.”

Amanda gave David her number, and he called her the next day. He was determined that he treat this dog-loving woman as well as possible. “I didn’t want to play games,” explains David. “I thought, ‘Right, I’m going to go for it.’”

For their date the pair arranged to meet at a local restaurant. They spent the evening laughing and talking, and there was not a moment of awkwardness, even without Georgie and Bessie to fall back on. “We had a really nice time,” says Amanda. “It was so easy and it just flowed. David told me more and more about himself, that he’d been married and was divorced... we just got on really well. We talked all night and it was great… we didn’t talk about the dogs once.”

Suddenly, David and Amanda’s relationship had stepped up a notch. So when Amanda was offered a magazine assignment on a cruise ship in January 2005, she invited David to come along. David readily agreed, but was secretly wondering whether he might have made a mistake.

“To be honest, I wasn’t that keen on going,” he reveals. “I was thinking: ‘What if it doesn’t work out? I'll be stuck there in a little cabin.’” But he needn’t have worried. The week-long cruise was pure romance from start to finish and when the couple returned to Sydney they had no doubts they were meant to be together. Within weeks they had set up house together.

“Looking back, I think that was my idea,” says David. “I was thinking to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is not like me.’ To know a girl for three or four months and then move in with her seems so reckless, but I just knew it was the right thing to do. I guess when you meet the right person, well, you just know.”

For a while everything went beautifully, with even Georgie and Bessie enjoying their new living situation, but there was no doubt sharing their home had its downsides. The apartment was small and it seemed even smaller when it was crammed with two people and two lively dogs. Eventually, Amanda had enough and insisted the new family upgrade their digs. “The dogs were really enjoying themselves,” says Amanda. “They had each other for company when we went off to work, but there wasn’t enough space.”

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