by Dinah Latham
I have a vague feeling of nausea when I pass a gymnasium or fitness training centre even now, and rapidly cross the road if I see anybody dressed for a workout session, since their ability to make rational decisions must surely be questioned.
On a lighter note, just how great is it to have a soul mate like Harriet, who has an acceptance of who I am without me trying any sort of workout? One of the greatest gifts of this relationship is that, as a woman, I don’t need to worry about looking good to impress her. She won’t notice if I put on a few pounds, although she has been instrumental in helping me lose a few.
I read a leaflet about ‘keeping fit in retirement’, only to wonder how you adapt that advice if you needed to get fit first. The assumption that I’d reached this milestone in a super fit state was something of a misconception on behalf of said leaflet. I arrived ready for a bus pass, never having thought about allocating time to myself to consider where I was on the fitness scale. I knew I was exhausted. I seemed to sleep almost continually for some weeks when I first retired; what bliss.
Surrounded by patients, I was able to see myself as healthy by comparison because I wasn’t ill, but for me fitness was a new concept… ‘getting it’ primarily rather than following guidance on how to ‘keep it’.
Harriet’s arrival led me into maybe practising a bit of it with our walks: weight down a bit, blood pressure down without one visit to the gym, just walking, and not even at a great pace, about six miles a day. I’m sure the fitness report would say ‘could do better’. After all, Harriet probably covers about three times the distance, bounding ahead and playing chase round the field with a friendly Lurcher, but then she hasn’t read the retirement leaflet or given any thought to keeping fit; she hasn’t asked for leg warmers or a headband yet anyway.
And now here I am, enthusiastically volunteering to run around a very often wet and muddy field, being battered and knocked over by sheep and trying to escape an over-excited dog who’s not quite sure what to do with an instinct that tells her to get the sheep and bring them to me.
10
DOG WALKERS AND DOGGIE ACTIVITIES
We met another Bearded Collie and owner this morning on our walk; a full blown show Beardie. They can never resist coming up and asking exactly what breed Harriet is, and then commiserating that she’s ‘not a proper Beardie’. With her tousled rough coat, the ‘working Beardie’ doesn’t quite have the finesse of the show Bearded Collie. She looks what she is: a working breed. I drop casually into the chat that, of course historically, all Beardies looked like Harriet until breeders began to mess about with them. It could therefore be suggested that hers was the ‘improper’ Beardie and mine the original.
We meet the Retriever and the Labrador brigades, on the weekend walk. They circle the park, as though they are posturing for a Country Life photo shoot to demonstrate the joys of rural living; dressed in their Barbours, out with their clean, shiny dog trotting to heel with its matching collar and lead. If they let their dog off the lead sometimes maybe so many of them wouldn’t be quite so fat. Dogs are such trusting creatures with so little control over their own destinies. I have a real desire to see them run free.
They nod to the couple with the Red Setter as they remove their boots and place them side by side in the special zipped Wellington boot bag in the back of the four-by-four next to their, now crated, canine.
There is a member of a relatively new breed of dog-walking-human-beings approaching as we circle round behind the football pitch. Not the first of this variety we’ve spotted today, the breed seems to be rapidly increasing daily. One hand is glued to the mobile phone, itself glued to the ear, with the owner of said apparatus being totally unaware of anything else going on anywhere. A lead dangles loosely from the other hand, possibly belonging to one of the dogs causing havoc somewhere over there, indeed probably this one dragging the bag from the rubbish bin, diligently distributing its contents. Could be that one that needs to be attached to that leash or maybe it’s the one who has his teeth embedded in those shorts, while the footballer struggles to get free. He (or she) walking the mobile phone remains steadfastly unaware throughout.
I sometimes wonder if they get home and forget they had a dog when they started out. I’m fairly unreliably informed that it’s the new way to conduct an affair: take the dog for a walk and talk to your secret lover. The level of engagement certainly makes it believable. Stories of dog-collar swapping parties are surely exaggerated?
I ruminate on the fact that it seems to be the dog owners who carry certain characteristics rather than the dogs, as I move to join the Collie ball-throwing gang in the centre of the park.
Then there’s the Labradoodle contingent; he of the non-allergic variety. Supposedly, all coughs, sneezes, runny eyes and itches disappear if you buy a Labradoodle. It would seem that the whole of the south east must be afflicted with hayfever, looking at the emergent numbers of said dogs. I met Amber today, that’s the owner, not the dog; she has one of these half and half Labradoodles. She tells me that Reggie is really depressed since he had his bits cut off. She hopes he will cheer up if he has a nice walk. He has a Poodle head and a Labrador body; who wouldn’t be depressed? And he’s probably confused as well because now he doesn’t know whether he’s a he or a she.
* * *
Tilly and Suvi could be forgiven for being confused. They are both special Labradoodles who are Harriet’s best friends. It’s our ‘end-of-the-week-Friday-morning-walk-club’. Three friends chatting, three dogs playing; come rain or shine we’re there. When we’re all soaked to the skin, we have been known to discuss the possibility of an indoor doggie playground, where they could run and we could sit and have coffee, but most often we put the world to rights, while grumbling about the extortionate price of bread, discussing how to manage Christmas with disparate family factions coming or, on one walk of blessed memory, laughing till our sides ached commiserating with one of our party who had recently acquired three speeding tickets on one car journey taking the kids to football practice!
But yes, it is confusing for Tilly and Suvi. Both have absolutely gorgeous, woolly Labradoodle coats – one white, one black – and Harriet insists they are sheep who need to be herded around the field and definitely got out from behind that tree. In truth, should Harriet ever reach the dizzy heights of the sheepdog trial, she’ll owe much of her success to the practice she’s had with these two.
The blessed world of friendships is rightfully precious: loyal buddies who accept you for who you are, the good and the bad, and love you just the same are especially cherished when you live alone, helping to keep troubles in proportion, and even more special when they also love your dog.
I am privileged to have a big family of friends; many close. Tez and Val are two treasured friends who go right back to my nurse training days. We met on our first day in PTS (Preliminary Training School). Now, some fifty years later, here we are having shared the joy and grief of one another’s lives, loves and children. Wherever we have been across the globe, not one of us is in any doubt of the ongoing support given freely by the other two. There is an ease between us born of our history; a family in all but blood and indeed, in many senses, we grew up together, while learning our nursing career craft, and I guess now we’re growing old together.
Random memories break through when we meet up. Many of our conversations can send us into peals of laughter even now, recounting those dizzy teenage years in ‘60s London. Like the time we so wanted the newest craze – coloured lingerie – and, unable to afford to buy any, we boiled up our white underwear with a purple dye in the giant kettle chained to the wall at the end of the hostel corridor. Tea never tasted quite the same again made from that kettle. Then there was the time we helped Tez scale the wall to escape from the hostel – ‘the virgins’ retreat’ as it was known – where no men, not even fathers were allowed past the front door. Tez had been summoned to Matron’s office and disciplined by having her late pass cancelled for leaving a spigot (a small,
rigid, plastic stopper for closing a rubber tube) in her uniform dress when it went to the laundry. We only had one late pass a month – all the way up to 10.30pm – and it was confiscated for the most minor of misdemeanours: black stocking seams not straight; and failure to strip your bed in the morning. But this time we went AWOL and we made it, out and back in, without being discovered, having spent the evening ‘Rocking around the Clock’ with Bill Haley, as I remember.
* * *
Harriet is rolling over and over before tearing off full pelt for a ball. The assembled group of circling dog walkers stares disapprovingly at this scruffy reprobate, as they continue their sedate weekend walk. The ‘oh-dear-here-comes-that-ruffian-out-of-control-dog’ fraternity reaches down and scoops their darling little fluffballs into their arms, behaving as though Harriet was about to devour Truffles whole.
I pick up the now sodden ball that has collapsed at its join making it a lopsided sphere; we slope off on foot. At least Harriet gets the chance to run off lead and knows that a walk is a daily occurrence; the great outdoors being always on offer, not a once a week display of good behaviour.
I’m heading down into the wood when an out-of-breath Dennis comes panting up the hill. He’s asking if we’ve seen Gloria, his spaniel, who got away from him half an hour ago when she ran into the undergrowth chasing a rabbit, and hasn’t returned.
The idea, when a dog goes missing, is to stand and shout like a foghorn at intervals and trust that the truant will retrace his steps at some point and find you. That will happen just as you have a vision of him streaking across the nearest road in front of a thundering lorry.
A few engrossing chats later, I’m still playing ball with Harriet when Dennis appears again still bellowing for Gloria. I note that several dogs, plus owners, begin to head for their cars and the park exits. I presume this is because many of us know for sure that even when Gloria does return (and she absolutely will, when she decides she’s good and ready), she will resolutely refuse to be caught. Many an afternoon has been spent with a team of us trying to catch Gloria. As the rain begins I nevertheless feel guilty for not staying to help out Dennis, especially when I look back from the far side of the green to see his solitary figure, with cupped hands to his face, standing alone out in the middle, looking like a football ref long after the team has left the pitch.
Next time, Dennis; I promise.
* * *
There was a time when I wouldn’t have had any pangs of guilt about leaving Dennis and Gloria. Those were my ‘before Harriet’ years.
Dogs can mark periods in one’s life, boundaries between one time and another; happenings are either pre- or post-Harriet or ‘we did that when Harriet was still a puppy’.
She’s induced me to pay attention and to share her enthusiasm for whatever she sees. I need her to launch me into my day. The positives of the walk for me are exercise and communing with nature; a silent time of reflection. The walk for her satisfies different needs: exercise, yes, vast quantities; freedom to run unencumbered by a lead; to be reckless; to have fun with sticks; and to shout (bark) with excitement. Sniffing and pushing your nose into and around everything is of vital importance. Who’s been here before? Is he friend or foe? This need to examine anywhere and everywhere with your nose is equivalent to my chat with friends at the local coffee house.
She has turned me – even me – into an outdoorsman of sorts. It is a well-known truth that no Collie owner can survive for long as a couch potato. Anything that has Collie in it doesn’t just exist; it explodes with a need to keep moving and doing, bobbing and weaving, and darting under and over and around logs, trees, streams. They are astonishingly agile, which is of course why they are so good at dog agility and any other breed gets pushed into second place by them.
And there’s another breed of dog-owner: the keen agility club devotee. It’s great for all the dogs and they would just have a lovely time on all the equipment – up over the ‘A’ frame, zigzagging in and out of the weave poles, diving through the tunnels – if only their owners weren’t so intense about it all. We got drummed out of the last class, Harriet and I, accused of not taking it seriously enough because I thought it was hilarious when the Border Collie, Jack, decided, on the command ‘GO’, to run immediately to the end of the course to claim his reward toy rather than complete the course first! Definitely not to be encouraged, Jane tells me. It’s all very serious, timing is everything and Jack must learn to do it properly. Time for Harriet and me to beat a hasty exit methinks… even she seems to be aware that we’re ‘persona non grata’ here. Harriet seems to sense things so acutely and I pick up her mood instantly, or maybe she picks up mine; I’m not sure which.
I had felt the need to do all sorts of different doggie activities with Harriet during her early years, really to use some of her excess energy and, in a way, to compensate for having only a patio and no real garden. But I then discovered that it’s necessary to enjoy what it’s about, to be able to truly feel part of it, and mostly we didn’t! I was astonished at how fiercely competitive and deadly serious most of these turned out to be.
I loved the way Harriet would stop right at the top of the ‘A’ frame and balance there, looking all around, as if to say, ‘Hey, look at me! I’m the King of the castle!’ Apparently, I was supposed to stop this unseemly behaviour and hurry her on with a severe tone, making sure of course that she didn’t fly off from halfway down the frame and that her feet touched the coloured board prior to streaking to the next bit of apparatus.
We then had a go at fly ball, where dogs run over several little jumps, grasp a tennis ball in their mouth as it shoots out from a sort of parapet in front of them, turn and run back over the jumps and drop the ball. I thought Harriet would really like this one, since it involved the much loved ball. Actually, she was scared of the noise the ball made as it was shot out of the holding equipment and it had to be simply rolled down before she was brave enough to grab it! Once again, I discovered we were into shouting and leaping about, trying to get the dog to sprint back faster and faster, with the timer and its second hand being the most significant item of tackle – certainly more important than the dog.
Then there was doggie dancing, with Harriet doing figures of eight around my legs and then weaving in and out of my legs as I walked forward. She was – well, still is – quite good at this. She will turn circles, walk on her hind legs and all sorts. The problem in the team was that she was considered untidy in the way she performed the routines; wagging her tail in the wrong places, allowing her attention to wander, and would sometimes look the other way when something caught her attention. And ‘heaven forbid’, she sometimes gave an excited bark in the middle of a dance routine. I was informed she was ‘not a performance dog’ and invited to use another dog for display purposes: a mottled Spaniel called Dougal. So we withdrew less than graciously from that game. Both Harriet and I had quite liked the dancing, and still do actually, but now we really enjoy it, performing on our own as a one man show where we and everyone else have fun.
I had a word with Harriet the day we were dismissed, somewhat unceremoniously, from the group, telling her that the failure label was meant for me, not her. I gave her an especially delicious tea of scrambled egg and cheese, making sure she understood that really she was too good for the team.
Finally, we found sheepherding – or rather it found us – and neither of us has looked back. It feels so different for her to be doing a job of work, to be engaged using her instincts, to encourage her to slow down, and to move the sheep calmly and carefully; where just she and I are working as a team, not trying to fit in with what other members want and not trying to gain approval from others. I guess I decided against doing that some time ago now.
I have a friend who, after I had Harriet, described me as a failure as a friend because I hadn’t taken agility seriously and been desperate to travel with her and her dogs to agility competitions all over the country. I tried to explain to her that I was clearly in the wrong
queue when competitiveness was handed out. I described how if we had gone to an agility competition together, I would have wanted her to win because it would have meant so much more to her than to me. I’m not sure she really understood what I was saying; her psyche was unable to make sense of someone who doesn’t live to win.
However, she was the very friend who discovered where it might be possible for me to learn about sheepherding relatively locally. She now accuses me of being the biggest bore there is, always talking about sheepherding, and she insists on calling it sheep chasing – I have to cover Harriet’s ears whenever she says it.
I guess she must have forgiven me and I further deduce that it really is ‘horses for courses’, or should I say ‘dogs for apparatus’; mine and Harriet’s apparatus being sheep. Even when ‘working’ at a trial, not every dog behaves as it should though. I have heard tell of a sheepdog trial where, in the middle of an outrun to collect his sheep, a Collie decided to temporarily divert from the course, dash over to a family of spectators at the edge of the course, and grab a chicken leg from their picnic before returning to complete his outrun!
Running around in my head are also thoughts about how maybe I like working alone? District nursing is a job where you are working on your own most often and, in a sense, lecturing can be quite a lonely occupation. As a district nurse, it’s most often just you and your patient or family while, when lecturing, you may have a very large, raked lecture theatre, with maybe three hundred or so in the ‘audience’, but you are on your own at the front, doing your job alone. I go on in thought to mull over the fact that even my voluntary time with the Samaritans is on the phone; me connecting, building a relationship, one to one. This, again, might be described by many as a solitary undertaking.
Here, I am again choosing a leisure activity where I’m effectively on my own with Harriet; with a herd of sheep as my audience. Perhaps there is something in all of this that has helped, or even led me, towards leading a single life? Maybe all this is simply an acknowledgment of how uncompetitive I am.