Bernie

So I have a confession to make. I have never liked dogs, safe to say I probably hated them. I always thought dogs were dicks. Then when my Mum was dying in a hospice, I drove past a dogs home and went in. And momentarily my soul was calmed.

So, I decided to get a dog. I looked online and remembered a picture of a Bernese Mountain dog puppy I had seen months before and thought to myself, if I ever got a dog, I would want that kinda bear.


All my friends were like,

“Luisa, you are aware you’ve never had a dog before?”

“Yes”

“Well why don’t you think about getting a handbag size dog? One that’s easy to carry around and handle…”

“Because my mums dying“

“Get the bear!”

So I reserved a boy BMD and decided on calling him Bernie, yes it it original actually as its short for Béarnaise sauce, my favourite to go with Steak. ( A year before I was on a date with Pas for Steak and Blow Job day and we were fantasizing about living next door to each other in central London and that if we did, we would get a dog each and go on dog walks every day in the park we would live opposite to, and I said she could call hers steak and I would call mine blowjob, oh how we laughed. But that would be awkward to shout out in the park as people might get mistaken and think I’m advertising, so instead I settled on the next best thing to Blow job and went with Béarnaise sauce.)


I was meant to pick up Bernie the day after the funeral, but he fell through. Breeder had to keep hold of him. Everyone said that was a sign from my Mum that I shouldn’t get a dog, I thought it was a bit of a rubbish sign tbf, actually a nicer sign would be like if she came to me in a dream or something, you know, told me its all going to work out and I’ll be very happy, not take my only bit of hope away by removing the one thing I was looking forward to in a life that seemed completely dark. Don’t take away the bear.

Anyway a week or so later, an alert came through on my phone for a BMD puppy that had been returned, I completely forgot I’d had the alert set up, I went to check and low and behold the puppy was a girl and she was Polish. Now that was a sign. I got in the car first thing still wearing my pyjamas and drove for 4 hours to this woman’s house in North London. I came home with Bernie (the girl) in a washing basket.


She has saved my life that dog. I have never known love like it. She has helped me cope though trauma. She has helped me through my grief, she has helped me navigate shitty situations, like trying to perform in NYC and dying on my arse to 3 people most nights (yes she sat on the plane next to me). It was actually thanks to Bernie that I could face public transport again without panic attacks. She became my emotional support dog and my Roast Chicken Thief.


Back when I first got her, I was embarking on a tour and I was struggling. It had been a few months since Mum passed and I was on stage trying to pull my trousers down to do the Thigh Gap joke in Am I Right Ladies, but it just didn’t matter to me anymore. I couldn’t perform the show and really felt the room close in and the embarrassment just flush through my whole body. Bernie, who was backstage in the dressing room, started crying. I asked my tour manager to get her and instead she brought her out on stage and sat with her.


I started telling the audience the story of how I got her.  And then about my Mum, and the cancer, and the hospice and trying to navigate life when you are lost. That night Politics For Bitches was born. It was also the night I launched my charity, Helena’s Hospice Foundation, audiences wanted to help, so they donated. With cash going to buy Luxury home comforts for patients and families in hospices.


So the dog really, is the hero of everything, and it all started that night, with Bernie on stage, right by my side. She has not left me since.

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