Chasing old leads

'I can't talk/ would like a walk/ here is my lead.'

They might be among the first words I ever learned to read, because I saw them every day for a decade or more from early childhood, printed in a peculiarly gothic script at the bottom of a chunky wooden rectangle strung from a nail from our kitchen wall.

Above the lettering - and above our collie-cross Judy's lead, hanging from a hook jutting from the wooden rectangle - was a wooden cut-out of a puppy, a dachshund, possibly, with an appealingly wistful expression. Below him, in lettering that had little to do with that gothic exhortation to canine perambulation, was one word: 'Millport'.

The dog lead holder was a gift to my mum and dad from my maternal grandmother, who, like generations of Glaswegians before her, devotedly spent her meagre holiday time in Millport, the sole town on the island of Great Cumbrae, North Ayrshire.

Millport, my child brain decided, must be a hotbed of dog-walking activity, the very epicentre of UK canine exercise, to merit such a specifically canine-related product.

The hanger followed us from our first house in Cumbernauld to the home which stayed in our family from 1974 until this summer, when the place was finally sold. When, though, did the 'I can't talk...' hanger disappear?

I wish I knew. I wish I'd taken more of an interest, because it was a one of those pieces of family ephemera that becomes familiar to the point of invisibility while it's still around – and very nearly a holy relic once it's gone.

One day, my mum or dad must have decided it was surplus to requirements; too old, too tatty or just didn't suit a gleaming white 1980s kitchen.

Not that there weren't still dog leads to hang up – there were always dogs around, almost to the end. Judy, a former stray, was found in the classified ads of the Evening Times (as, more than likely, were most pets in Central Scotland in the seventies) and never quite forgot her days as a street dog, running away from home to scavenge rubbish every bin collection day. Then there was Tanya the golden retriever, and Tanya's puppy Geyna (the result of a surprise mating when Tanya escaped one night, shortly after I'd moved out of the family home for college in Edinburgh), then Gemma, a hyperactive black lab cross who was my mum and dad's last dog.

The 'I can't talk...' hanger was gone long before Gemma finally departed, though it had etched itself deep into my memory. There's hardly a day I reach for our own dogs' leads (hung from the coat rack in our hall) that I don't picture those gothic letters.

'I can't talk/ would like a walk / here is my lead.'

Today, I thought about it as Trudy, our little Romanian rescue dog, and I walked up the hill towards home. When I got back to my desk, I tapped those unforgettably Germanic letters into Google ... but didn't find a match. Then I tried a search for 'vintage dog lead holder' on eBay and ... bingo! There it was - but not from Millport. This one was advertising the (no doubt) considerable charms of Perranporth.

There must have been a factory churning these things out as trinkets for holiday destinations all over the UK including, among many, many others, Millport.

My sisters and I spent the last year or so slowly clearing out the old family home, emptying cupboards, rooting through boxes and sorting out wardrobes, but the dog lead hanger was long, long gone. So it was a pleasure to find one on eBay,looking exactly as I remembered it (apart from Perranporth subbing for Millport). I was tempted to put in a bid, but decided against it, and the search goes on.

For nostalgia's sake, if I ever find one it has to be exactly right. For me, as for my gran, it's Millport or nothing.