The dog’s owner, Derek ‘Del Boy’ Taylor, spent many years in the market and is still a larger-than-life character. These days, he runs a training consultancy with his wife Francesca. Del Boy and Fran couldn’t face having Storm put down when he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer; instead, they have spent thousands of pounds on the pioneering transplant, which apparently offers hope to human amputees as well.
However, the market is full of cynics. “The lengths some people will go to get publicity,” one of my (unsavoury) muckers emailed me. “Even cutting their dog’s leg off.” The email was intended as a joke, but, perhaps not surprisingly, Del Boy suffered a major sense-of-humour failure. The contrite mucker apologised. “That’s the problem with emails. They just make everything so black and white. They can’t quite convey the subtle nuances of grey.” Anyway, Storm is in fine form and apparently eager to start chasing foxes again.