Sandy becomes part of our lives.

 When I met my husband, his parents had a black and white collie/retriever type dog and he had such a kind gentle nature.  He found a sunny spot in our living room when he came and would lie down for a good sleep, we just had to be careful to walk round him!!!  On one visit our little toddler of about 14/15 months lay back against him and he didn’t move, just stayed snoozing in the sun.  Daughter also succumbed to the sun and had her afternoon nap leaning against him.  Occasionally Ricky would open an eye, close it again and then waited patiently for her to wake up and move away.  He was up like a shot and rushed to the back door to be let out in the garden.  Poor old chap was desperate to relieve himself, which he suitably did, but had waited rather than disturb our toddler.

The next dog that was part of our married life was Sandy, our golden cocker puppy who we had from when he was allowed to leave the litter.  We had waited to have our own dogs until our youngest was walking and so less likely to do unexpected things to a puppy.  His new experiences and his antics never stopped as he grew and I have many memories of him lolloping across the lino in the kitchen with ears flapping up and down with the speed and his surprise when he went sliding and then came to a full stop at the transition of the lino to the carpet in the living room.  I can’t forget the snowy memories either; to start with he didn’t know what to do with it  ….. try to catch the snowflakes with his tongue or eat it from the ground.  As for throwing balls for him, why do that when you can throw a snowball for him?  As usual he went bounding through the snow, turned round to wait for it to reach him and then totally surprise that the snowball didn’t continue rolling towards him.  Having long hairy legs and feet of course meant the snow stuck to them and turned into ice balls and when he bounded into the kitchen again it sounded like he was tap-dancing as the ice bounced off the lino.  We had to make him stand on an old towel and rub the ice until it was all melted and his legs and feet were warmer.  

He was enthusiastic over everything, even to the point when he would go blue in the tongue from pulling too hard on the lead.  Despite his puppy training he did not respond to tapping on the nose with a roll of newspaper if he pulled away from heel when being walked.  It also didn’t seem to make any difference what type of lead we used either; a leather one or a choke chain.  Harnesses didn’t seem to be around then or we would have tried one of those.  The only way was for us to stop until his tongue turned to a normal colour before we could resume our walk.

Like Ricky, my husband’s parent’s dog, he too found the sunny patch in the living room and didn’t like the children to go near him and then it progressed to anyone to go near him by growling at them.  At the same time, he started getting possessive of my lap; he would come running, jump on my lap, circle round and round and settle down, not to be disturbed.  If I tried to move, he would growl although he did finally jump off if I started to rise from the seat.  It then reached the point when he would start growling and snarling, followed by an attempt to bite.  I am afraid at this point we were unhappy with him as a dog with children as we wouldn’t be able to leave him out of our sight when the children were up and awake and it was time for us to find him a new home.  Not the nicest of decisions to take.

It wasn’t long before we had another dog, more of that in the next instalment.

Dogs

My sister was given a black miniature poodle for her 8th birthday as Mum and Dad then thought she was old enough to be responsible to look after it and take it for walks with one of them.  She was a lovely little dog and my sister called her Candy.  We were living in Watford at the time and I have already told the story that it was Candy that didn't get on with our cat Sooty and so Sooty went to live with my grandparents in the country.

I really wanted a puppy for myself but I was too young; isn't it frustrating that at whatever stage you are in life you are either too young, too old or "don't worry, it is your age"!!!

Three years later, when we were living in Whitstable, my parents decided that it was time to allow Candy to have a litter of puppies.  I didn't really understand anything about dogs giving birth to puppies but I soon learned.  Mum had created a nice cosy corner in the kitchen under the kitchen table in the corner.  There was a large cardboard box with a cut out in the front and sheets of newspaper and an old blanket inside to make it comfy.  The box and surrounding floor was covered in newspaper to try and keep the floor a bit cleaner.  One morning I went downstairs to find 3 of the puppies had been born and Candy was in the process of giving birth to the fourth.  I actually saw the puppy being born which must have been an eyeopener!  All of the puppies were males which was disappointing as Mum and Dad had hoped one would be a bitch and she would have become my 8th birthday present.  Mum and Dad had been savvy though and arranged with the stud dug's owner that if there no bitches they would be able to exchange one for a bitch that they had from other litters.  I think another of our puppies was the fee for Candy being put to the stud dog.  In due course we received the promised little bitch puppy which was given to me and I called her Suki.  I am sure the name must have meant something to me at the time but I have no recollection of it.

We had such fun with our dogs and they were very good natured; Suki even let me dress her up with a bonnet to help keep the sun from her eyes and also take her for walks in my dolls pram.  I must try and find the photo that was taken like Suki in the pram in the back garden in our house in Upminster.

Poodles, of course, have wool and not hair.  It grows quite quickly and is curly.  Mum and Dad use to have them cut with a "lamb's cut" so that the dogs didn't have those pom poms on their legs but they did have pom pom tails which back in that time were legal to dock.  One lasting memory is the smell of singed wool.  We had a little electric two bar radiant heater in the downstairs room and the dogs would snuggle up close and had been known, in fact many a time, to turn round and round before lying down and toasting themselves in front of it.  The trouble was the tails with their fluffy pom poms often touched the electric bar and singed .....phew, what a whiff!!

Another memory from Upminster was when we had set the table for tea in the dining room......cutlery, crockery, cake, bread, jams and the butter in the butter dish and then the doorbell rang!  Without thinking my Mum quickly pushed the dogs into the dining room so they didn't escape and dealt with the caller at the front door.  She let the dogs out again when she had closed the front door but oh dear.....Candy, or was it Suki, had jumped on the table and knocked the butter dish to floor and they both had butter round their mouths where they were busy licking it.

Dad loved to tease the dogs, not mercilessly, just gentle fun for them and us and never taken to extreme.  One day he recorded their bark and his voice talking to them.  He then put the recorder on the floor behind a mirror he balanced against a dining chair at the side of the dining room.  The dogs rushed to the mirror at the sound, saw themselves in the mirror and started barking back.  They ran to each side, couldn't see a dog and ran to the front again ... the dogs were there again...they just couldn't understand why they couldn't find them round the back!!  This was after we had moved back to Hertfordshire and living in Radlett.  Poodles are prone to blindness and unfortunately Suki's eyes slowly misted over and she relied on furniture staying in the same place or following Candy around as her guide dog.  Otherwise she lived a normal healthy life.  Candy developed a tumor which in time meant she had to be put to sleep and put out of her discomfort.  Suki was lost, she had lost her guide dog, she had lost the dog she had known all her life and had treated as her mother.  We all know how hard it is to lose a loved one, don't we.  After a while and a few injuries from knocking in to things, there was only one thing to do to be kind and so we became a dogless family again.

9

The number 9 features quite a lot on my maternal side and in particular to my maternal grandmother of whom I have many memories.  I have spoken about her before in blog posts.  Spot the 9's.

She was born in the 1890's and married in 1920, just two years before she moved into the new house, in 1922, where I visted her as a young child.    She had a very comfy figure; there was no way that I could put my arms around her but she remained agile enough to clamber on a chair at the big kitchen table so that she could plug her iron into the light fitting above the hanging ceiling light.  The kitchen table was also her ironing board and the centre of family life in the house.  

Family and people from the village used the kitchen door as the front door by walking round the house to the back paved are where the kitchen was on one side and the front parlour on the other.  The other two sides were the vegeatbale garden and access into a big back area of the garage where grandad had a bench and tools for mending shoes and all sorts of hand and garden tools. That paved area was a safe  playground to me and my sister and our cousins; well away from the road out the front.  We used to play ball games, skipping, hop scotch and ninesies.... Do you remember the game ninesies?

Dad would drive us for about 2 hours to get to the village where she and other members of the family lived.  We did this several times a year from Hertfordshire to Sussex.  As I grew older she seemed shorter, not surprisingly.  She never seemed less comfy though, no matter how old she was.

She stayed living in that house until the early 1970's when she could no longer manage the house and garden.  She moved to a lovely little bungalow up the road and that was closer to my aunt who used to visit everyday as she helped care for her. My husband and I visited with our family but it was a long way from Gloucestershire to Sussex for young children.  When Nan was in her mid 90's she moved into a care home down in the valley the other side of the railway line.  It was in a rural area on the outskirts of the village and there were many of her friends from the village living there too.  We visited her there and a couple of times my children took their violins and played to her which she enjoyed.  

When she was 99 she had an unfortunate tumble and she then looked much more frail and never recovered from that.  She sat in her chair with a sipping cup in front of her but drank very little.  She told us we were selfish as we all wanted her to be a hundred but she didn't want to as all her friends of her age in the home had died.  We had been so looking forward to celebrating her one hundreth birth that we hadn't stopped to think that she might not want to.  She was right, how selfish we were.

She died aged 99, just 8 months before her one hundredth birthday.