Introducing our correspondent
I'm Denise Smith and I grew up in Plymouth, training as a nurse before joining the pharmaceutical industry as sales representative, then training manager. We moved to a Grade II listed building set in two acres of rural South Gloucestershire 14 years ago, when Colin left the Royal Navy.
This home I share with Colin, my husband of 26 years who balances being a full time engineer and a bee keeper, son Austen, 17, daughter Bryony, 15, and two springer spaniels, Nutmeg, who we have had from a puppy and who is now five, and Paddi, who we rescued a year ago when he was three.
Being a ‘housewife’ for me involves juggling a single shift as a staff nurse with maintaining the home and garden, running the onsite holiday let, caring for the dogs and a flock of approximately 50 chickens. To relax I attend one lesson of tap dancing and as a student of taekwondo manage to fit in at least two hours of training a week. Denise Smith 2011
Denise writes:
Annoyed at being unable to save ‘dog’ as a language on my Facebook profile I stomped out into the fresh air with the dogs in tow. Yes for once I was in front and they were trotting obediently beside me albeit on leads.
Was I dreaming? No, but the last time this occurred Paddi was recuperating from having ‘the snip’ and so was still a little wobbly on his paws! Still it gave my shoulder a respite from potential dislocation and a glimpse of a potentially obedient dog.
Graeme Sims in his book ‘Give a dog a Home’ refers to dogs with kinks in their tails as having kinks in their personalities. Mind you the vet reckoned his was due to a failed attempt to dock his tail so perhaps his idiosyncrasies are manmade after all?
Joe Irving called it ‘a glimpse of hell’; Graeme refers to a ‘moment of madness’ as means of driving home a training message to a difficult dog. I didn’t really understand this until one miserable cold wet morning when Paddi darted yet again into a hedge. Caught off guard the move wrenched my arm where upon I let out a blood curdling scream followed by a stream of expletives as my arm slowly went numb.
Paddi seemed to freeze the shock evident in his eyes. The commotion attracted my neighbour to the rescue as she emerged from the gloom and escorted him home for me. Frustrated and angry I went into the kitchen to make tea to calm down. Nutmeg crept in and sat with me, while Paddi kept his distance.
Turning to answer the phone I knocked my elbow on the corner of a chair, a second of acute pain and feeling started to return thus sparing me a trip to casualty and so my humour started to improve.
If you count his removal from his mother as a puppy followed by his re-homing, Paddi has already been excluded from two packs and I believe that Paddi’s personal ‘hell’ would to have been excluded for a third time and my body language that day must have communicated this as a possibility.
I believe in those moments he realised ‘which side his bones had gravy on’ so to speak for although he did not completely stop pulling on the lead he has never pulled me in such a dangerous and wayward manner since.
See also:
Read more from our Countryside bloggers here.
No comments have been made.