Out of Africa, the £10,000 hound

Jo Cameron Brown with Jack Russell Candy, left, and Togo, the new friend brought to Scotland after a life of neglect in Morocco Picture: SSPCA

It was love at first sight. The skinny mutt rolled over and asked for a tummy tickle. Mr Tucker obliged and from that moment he could not abandon the homeless hound, leaving him to roam the Sahara desert.

Mr Tucker took on a mission to bring the pooch back to his own home in Newington, Edinburgh. Little did he know that it would end up costing him a small fortune.

He was visiting actress partner Jo Cameron Brown, who played Moira Henderson in BBC1 soap River City, while she was working on a Moroccan filmset as a voice coach last June. Packs of stray dogs that roamed the Sahara often approached the set in the mornings, enticed by the smells of sausages and bacon cooking, hoping for titbits left over from breakfast.

Mr Tucker, who runs a holiday letting business in Edinburgh, said: "There was a catering trailer at the studio. At breakfast time, when they were cooking up bacon and sausages, these dogs would suddenly appear.

"It's as good a place as any to hang out if you are a dog there because you have all these silly westerners bringing them titbits and treats.

"There were much cuter ones and people were fussing over them and I saw this other dog, which looked quite scruffy. He had bite marks all over him and a scraggy coat.

"I felt sorry for him so I went over to him and he gobbled up a few sausages and some bacon and he was so loving, he just wanted to be petted.

"Then I realised by his teeth that he wasn't an old dog, he was just not in very good condition."

Mr Tucker decided to rescue the dog, which he called Togo. But he admitted that if they had known in advance how much it would cost, the couple would have thought twice.

As well as thousands of pounds in quarantine bills and flights back and forth to try to sort out the details, the couple had pay a courier firm to bring Togo back. "We have no regrets, but if we had known it was going to cost 10,000 we would have had to think hard about it," Mr Tucker said. "But when you are halfway down the track and you have this dog that you feel responsible for, how can you just dump him?"

After several failed attempts, Togo finally flew with a courier from Marrakech, via Casablanca, Frankfurt and London, to arrive in Glasgow last July. He then came into the care of the Scottish SPCA's Dunbartonshire Animal Rescue and Rehoming Centre at Milton, and spent six months in quarantine before being cleared to go home with the couple.

The first time Togo went into the garden was to play in the snow.

"It must have been strange for him, but he didn't seem to worry," said Mr Tucker. "He seemed delighted."

Togo, whom the couple think is a type of wild dog native to Africa, has now spent three weeks in Scotland and is settling in well.

"Our Jack Russell Candy's nose was put out of joint at first, but we're pleased to say she's now getting used to her new brother and it's terrific to see them chasing each other around the garden."

Ms Cameron Brown is now writing a screenplay called Togo, Lord of the Atlas.

A spokeswoman for the SSPCA said there were cheaper ways to adopt a dog, but it would not discourage anyone who wanted to give a stray animal a home. "They fell in love with the dog so they had good reason to bring him home, but there are strays here that need a home," she said.