One Girl and Her Dog

When my children were 2 and 3 yrs old we took them to my parents in law for a holiday whilst we were there one of their neighbour’s dogs had just delivered puppies.  We chose two and Daisy and Maisy eventually came home to us.  Maisy died some years ago but Daisy has been my soul mate for 18 and a half years.  I loved her for so long now I can’t remember not loving her.  She was the most brilliant dog for catching rats and mice (a pain in the neck when you have horses) She has grown up with my 2 eldest children and my youngest (now nearly 15 years old has never had a life without her in it)  

As she has got older, Daisy has lost her hearing and most of her sight.  She has had more than one stroke and her hips aren’t as good as they used to be.  It is sad to see she can no longer jump on the sofa or climb the stairs to hide under the pillows on the bed because she knows she shouldn’t be there, but she is my best friend.  I have been lucky that all my animals (horses, cats, dogs, goldfish) have lived long and full lives and I now regret the days I have cuddled Daisy when it is just me and her in front of the fire and said ‘do me the biggest favour, don’t let me chose when you die, just go to sleep one night on your pillows and let me find you cold in the morning’.  Today I would give anything to have her here, under my feet, involuntarily hurdling over her as she gets under my feet whilst cooking.  I cannot begin to describe how I feel about her; she has been constant in my life for so long.  She has never let me down, she has looked after my children, made me laugh, worried me senseless but most of all she has been MY constant companion for the last eighteen and half years. 

Over recent months as she got older and more senile, I have mopped up after her, tempted her with titbits (something I NEVER do with my animals) cuddled her on my lap in front of the fire when no one was around and valued every extra minute she has given me because I know her time is now very limited.

Today she went missing, it was my fault, I let her out and went off to clean the bathroom when I came to let her in she was gone.  Usually she would return after the ‘constitutional’ inspection of our small village, today she didn’t.  I have searched high and low, in hedges and fields, I have knocked on the limited number of front doors in our village, my husband and the local farmer have been out with a Land Rover and a high powered lamp but there is no sign of her. 

I cannot begin to explain my grief.  She is old, she cannot survive a night out in November. Perhaps she has had another stroke and is lying, unheard in a ditch.  Perhaps someone picked her up (despite having a collar and tag) thinking she was lost or uncared for.  Perhaps someone hit her by accident in their car and didn’t have the courage to come and tell me.  Perhaps she was taken by the foxes (I heard barking in the field opposite soon after she was missing) as she was too old and frail to fight for herself.  Perhaps she is locked, inadvertently in someone’s garage or shed.  So many questions.  All I know is I want her back, I need to tell her I didn’t mean I wanted her gone when I said I wanted her to go to sleep and not wake up, I just didn’t want to have to make the decision.  Most of all I didn’t want her to leave.  I just need one last hug and the ability to say ‘Thank You’. 

Plumbing - A Varied View of Life

The families from Dale Farm are being evicted. There are rights and wrongs to their eviction. They broke the planning laws and they shouldn’t have done. It remains to be seen where they will relocate but part of me thinks it would have been easier for the council and the occupants of Dale Farm to have negotiated a compromise on the existing situation rather than completely overhaul it. But that is a whole different debate or blog.

I believe, strongly, that there is good and bad in ALL sections of society. This was evident this summer during the London riots which saw a mixture of hatred and lack of respect for people and buildings result in determination by other members of the affected communities to rise from the destruction and rebuild their shattered communities. It is a basic human instinct to protect our homes, families and livelihood when under threat.

This week one of the jobs we are doing is working on a ‘Park Home’ site. The families that live on this site are travelling show people; they spend the year travelling to Fun Fairs providing entertainment. The site is made up of a series of large static caravans and pre fabricated chalet bungalows. The families live in very close proximity to each other and it is difficult to tell who the children belong to as family units are so intermingled. They live in both the caravans and chalet bungalows and there living accommodation is pristine. Three or four generations of the same family live in close proximity to each and share the responsibility of caring for the children, organising works that need doing on the site and travelling the Fairs entertaining people.

I will not forget a phone call though that started with a quiet, unassuming voice asking me ‘Hello I need a new boiler, do you work on Park Home sites?’ Not ‘Hello I need a new boiler, can you come and give me a quote’. I felt an overwhelming sadness. I could not imagine having to live a life where you doubted constantly that people would carry out work for you just because of where you live and the lifestyle. I can’t say negotiating the logistics of this week’s job has been easy; it is not easy to discuss things with a customer who travels hundreds of miles every week going from town to town working until the small hours of the morning. On the positive side, Olly who is installing the new oil boiler has been plied with constant cups of tea and coffee.

I cannot change people’s prejudice against Gypsy’s, Travellers and Show People but I can hope that we can all learn to see a bigger picture, not a black and white picture but one painted with the bright and varied colours of our different heritages and lifestyle choices. It wouldn’t do for us all to be the same.

To wax or not to wax

This morning I noticed that Duncan Bannatyne was rather agitated that Mumsnet Founder, Justine Roberts had stuck her head above the parapet (again) Ms Roberts stated that girls should be allowed to be girls rather than indulging in beauty treatments, in this case waxing, and ‘not obsess about being hairless’. http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/212995/Dragon-s-slain-for-girls-spa/

My blog is not here to sit in defence of Mr Bannatyne, I am sure he is more than capable of doing this himself!

My irritation is with Ms Roberts. I have 3 children including one 21 year old and one 14 year old girl. I was born with fair skin, blonde eyebrows and due to the development of Polycystic Ovarian Disease, occasionally too much body hair for my liking! Let me tell you something Ms Roberts had my mother had the opportunity to escort me to a treatment that could have tinted my eyebrows and waxed some of the hair from my body, as a teenager, I would have had far more self confidence as a teenager.

My youngest daughter has dark hair and dark eyebrows, she is a beautiful looking girl but SHE feels uncomfortable with her bushy eyebrows. For twelve months now my youngest daughter has joined myself and her older sister in having her eyebrows waxed, by a qualified beautician in my presence. I am forty eight years old, with twenty two years experience of raising three bright, funny, well adjusted (I hate that description) children. I KNOW what makes them feel insecure and what makes them feel better about themselves. That, Ms Roberts, is a good mother. Knowing what makes your child feel self confident about themselves. Now, should that be dressing in a day glow pair of socks, wearing thick black eye liner or once every 6 weeks having their eyebrows or half legs waxed a good mother will know how to assist and advise them with compassion and understanding and will refrain from immediately dismissing their thoughts and suggestions without due consideration for their feelings.

I have not forced my daughters into having their eyebrows (or anyone other part of their bodies) waxed, they made the decision for themselves, when they were ready. I have merely ensured they use a qualified beautician and in my presence. My girls and I enjoy our ‘girlie’ beauty evenings. We chat, we giggle, we discuss a range of subjects and we have fun. They feel they have been pampered and feel good about themselves following one of our ‘treatments’. Get over yourself Ms Roberts. I shall carry on my journey through motherhood completely relying on my own instincts and will refuse to the listening to the cackling of other mothers who ‘know best’.

Wide eyed and hairless

Spring has arrived! The other day I decided it was time to don my new summer frock. I gleefully popped on the new frock and decked myself in my large brimmed hat and sat in the sunshine. After approximately a minute I realised there were two alien ‘things’ sticking out from the hem of my dress. Legs! Boy, oh boy, were they a sight to behold. I sat in my garden, feet up on a garden chair and I found myself looking around furtively, in case anyone else could see these unsightly objects. I was hit by a brainwave. I will epilate them!

It seemed a good idea at the time but there comes a point, about half way up the shin of your right leg, that you get that gut wrenching moment and realise there is NO turning back. It is at the same moment you also realise it was most likely a man who had invented the epilator, safe in the knowledge he would never rip the hairs from his leg at a rate of 600 revolutions a minute.

Small beads of perspiration had started to break out on my brow. My eyes were out on stalks as I offered the epilator to my leg. My leg developed a mind of its own and started to attempt a retreat out of the bedroom door. I twist my body into a strange, contorted shape (the like of which has never been attempted by any Olympic Gymnastic) as I try to sit on my own leg to prevent its exit from the room. By this time I am, quite frankly, sweating like a pig in a pork pie shop! My teeth are gritted so hard they are starting to appear out of the top of my head and I have ground all but the finest layer of enamel from them. My left hand is gripping my leg with a vice like grip. I try a different technique and run the blades of torture faster up and down my leg. This results in me chasing myself around the bedroom, hopping from one foot to another, as I begin to hyperventilate. I persevere with a steely determination so as not to end up with one leg smooth as a baby’s bottom and the other looking like it has been transplanted from a small baboon.

Several hours later, actually that is not true, it was an agonising eternity; my job is complete. Not a hair in sight and if there is one, it is clinging to the life raft of my leg by its own enamel free teeth. The upside is that I have lost two stone in weight in the form of gallons of perspiration! The downside is as a result of having hairs ripped out of them at an obscene rate of knots my legs have gone into melt down and come out in hives that closely resemble nettle rash. I text my friend making an excuse not to meet her that evening at the local pub and cancel all engagements for the next 24 hours. Oh well, I won’t have to do that again for six weeks so it has to be worth it. Doesn’t it?

The Grand National

I learnt to ride at nine years old; I had my first horse at fifteen years old. She was young, unschooled and as green as the grass she ate. She never changed. She gave me the love of my life when I put her in foal to a friend’s Arab stallion. Sarbo arrived, the ugliest thing I had ever seen but he became my soul mate. His mother had to be shot at the age of 21 and I was devastated. Sarbo grieved so badly that the vet told me to give up hope and have him shot too as he literally lay down and refused to get up, eat or drink. I didn’t. I kneeled every two hours, whilst 8 months pregnant, day and night for 48 hours, syringing an obscure concoction of kaolin, morphine and electrolytes into him. I talked to him, I begged him to live. I prayed to any god that may be listening not to take him away from me and he lived, thankfully.

I loved him with all my heart. When he was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease I knew, at 16 years old, his end was near. He had lost his sparkle, he was always pleased to see me but everything else just wasn’t ‘doing it’ for him. I could keep him alive with drugs but it was January and he had dreadful laminitis and was grossly overweight despite living outside and getting no ‘hard’ feed, other than a bit of hay. Come the Spring he would have had to have been stabled and kept on the tiniest patch of grass. That would have broken his spirit and mine. He was Arab, he loved to gallop across the field with his tail arched over his back and he would never be able to do that again.

On a Monday morning in January my husband went to work and unbeknown to him I rang round trying to find someone to shoot my horse. I rang my husband and told him. He refused to let me deal with it myself and I was too distraught to argue. The huntsman arrived, he was a small, calm and very, very gentle man. He said ‘Hello’ to my horse with his ‘gun’ tucked into the back of his waistband (so the horse couldn’t see it) stroked his head and with a slight of hand any card player would have been proud of, tucked Sarbo's forelock behind the headband of his head collar. Then I was told to leave, my husband held the lead rope and I stood in the road out of view. The crack came cutting through the air. Birds stopped singing and for an eternity the village was silent. My hands went from covering my eyes to covering my ears and back again and again and again and at the same time I spun in circles trying to escape the sound. Then I ran. I ran to my horse now lying on the ground, a trickle of blood running from one nostril and a vein slowly pumping in his neck as his heart ground to halt. My husband shouted at me to stop and I heard a voice say, ‘let her go, its ok’. I fell to my knees, lifted my precious Sarbo’s head and rested it on my knees. ‘Is he dead’ I whispered. The huntsman looked at me and nodded. I heard the huntsman saying to my husband ‘now you need to leave because getting him into lorry will have no dignity attached to it’. My husband picked me up and I turned my back on Sarbo. I vaguely remember being half carried, half dragged up to the house, my boots were removed and my husband ran me a bath and I sank into it and tried to wash away the utter misery that was literally, making my heart ache.

Horses have been in my life as long as I can remember. I love the smell of them, the sight of them, and the early mornings. I have galloped across fields; I have galloped across the beach and sat on my old mare as she played in the sea. I have seen the sun rise on the coldest of days when the only heat was from my horse’s nostrils as I put his outside rug on. I am no different to anyone else who owns, works with or trains horses. So when people call for an end to the Grand National on the grounds of cruelty, it insults those people who work with horses. I can assure you there is utter misery when anything happens to their precious animals. On TV you only see the bright dresses of the lady owners, the colours of the silks the jockeys wear, the shine that has been put on the horses coat by hours and hours of brushing using a brush so soft you would think it wouldn’t brush a baby’s hair. The owners, trainers and grooms dedicate their lives to caring for their horses and are fortunate to have made this way of life how they earn their living. Horses fill our days from early morning to last thing at night, they touch our spirit and they wind themselves around our soul. Racing isn’t cruel; no horse will do anything it doesn’t want to do. Any death of a horse is tragic. I should know and whilst I accept it, I can never truly live with it. That is a life with horses, it is not misplaced sentiment, just a pure, unadulterated love of a way of life and the magnificent animals it involves