Love, Sweat and Tears

by Zelie Bullen

  Percy was a full-grown stud-breeding boar; but, fortunately for us, he was a good-natured animal who had clearly been treated well by his owners. Still, we respected the fact that he was a potentially dangerous animal, so one of our first priorities was leash-training him to ensure he was safe around the crew.

  Pigs can be very vocal and training Percy to tie up was a very noisy experience. One of the first lessons a horse learns is to accept a halter, to be led by a lead rope and then to be tied to a post or rail and to wait patiently. It is an important lesson for both the horse and the owner’s safety, and we teach it to all domesticated animals. This was Percy’s first lesson from Craig and I as his new trainers.

  Larry came and watched that first lesson as we got Percy accustomed to wearing a harness, to being led around and finally to being tied to a rail. The three of us stood by and reassured him as he pulled back and loudly told the rope off. Percy was lovely and, other than being vocal, he handled everything very well.

  In the film, Percy had to lie down and ‘talk’ to the piglet. We taught him to lie down on cue, to look left and right, and to get up on cue. One of the problems we faced was how to squeeze his gigantic bulk into the relatively small stable on the set. It wasn’t practical to lie Percy down and then set up the cameras around him, because then he would have to lie down for too long, so he had to learn to lie down exactly in the right spot, once the cameras were already in place. Considering his age and his size, we were all happy with the degree of accuracy that we got with that kind-hearted animal.

  At the end of filming, even though I knew all the animals would go to a good home, I wanted to keep Flaca. She had been the runt of her litter, just like Wilbur in the movie, and she was also one of the ugliest. In the movie she’s definitely not one of the cutest piglets—she has pointy ears and her eyes are quite close together, and she has a long pointy snout. We didn’t know how big she was going to grow, and we didn’t care; I really loved her and wanted to look after her for the rest of her life. Each day when we got to work and the pigs would be squealing and running around anticipating their breakfast, I couldn’t wait to get to Flaca for a cuddle.

  We brought her back to the Gold Coast with us and she still lives with us today. I attempted to keep a few others too, but Craig gently reminded me how much more attention she would receive being our only pig. So we only kept Flaca, safe in the knowledge that production had found the rest of the piglets good homes. The producers had paid transport and labour costs to ensure that the properties were checked out before the animals were delivered, and the new owners had to sign affidavits saying their pig would live out its natural life. My sort of happy ending.

  CHAPTER 44

  Bittersweet

  Charlotte’s Web holds bittersweet memories for me. We had lots of fun and met some lovely people and animals, but right towards the end Snoopy was put down. He was nearly seventeen.

  Snoopy had been there through Julie’s death, through Dad and Grahame and so many other testing times. When I walked away from Creekside Court after Grahame’s death, during that really ugly time in my life, I felt as though Snoopy and I were the only ones to get out alive.

  When Snoopy was about fifteen, he had been run over and ever since the lower half of his body had been partially paralysed. It was a Sunday afternoon and we had taken some rubbish to the tip. I fully blame myself for the accident; I had let him off the ute, and wasn’t protective enough with my beautiful ageing mate, who had gone deaf. The man who hit him was not necessarily at fault. He was reversing slowly when he bumped Snoopy. As I looked up and saw the car heading for Snoopy, I called out to him to move but he didn’t hear me or the car. His foot went under the back wheel and then slowly the car rolled over his pelvis. That poor man—Snoopy was screaming and I was a mess.

  Craig and I rushed Snoopy to the only twenty-four-hour vet service available at that time, which was an hour away in Brisbane. They said it didn’t look very good. I asked if there was something we could do. Could we perhaps make a trolley for him to move around on? I told them I couldn’t lose that dog.

  The vet said he would give him a day or two, but he wasn’t positive about the outcome because Snoopy’s back half wasn’t responding to nerve tests. That didn’t surprise me because, when I had picked him up at the tip and placed him in the passenger foot well of the ute, I could see he didn’t even know what his back end was doing. And he was in a lot of pain—it was just awful.

  I went up to visit him at the vet’s each day. They had given him medication to take away the pain, but he would look at me pleadingly when I left, wanting to know why I was going away without him. I was traumatised to be leaving without knowing if I would see him alive the next day.

  The vet told me he could operate, but the success rate was very slim and he asked whether I really wanted to put Snoopy through that. I was trying to figure out what to do. All the tests showed he had no coordination, no feeling whatsoever, in his tail and back legs.

  I have prayed a lot in my life, even though I don’t know who to. In my younger days I’d say, ‘Please, God, if it is you I’m supposed to pray to,’ but during that time I simply focused on Snoopy; I virtually meditated over his healing, as much as I could. I spent so much time thinking about that dog, saying, ‘Please get better, please, please’—he was everything to me. I knew he was getting old, his sight wasn’t good, he had gone deaf, but I really felt it wasn’t his time to go, not like that.

  After three days the vet said we could possibly give him one more night, but he wasn’t very optimistic because Snoopy hadn’t improved since I brought him in. They were looking for any sign of feeling, but he had reacted negatively to every test for several days. The vet staff had to carry him outside to go to the loo; he was very unhappy and the vet asked me how long I wanted him to go on like that. He said, ‘It’s your dog, your decision.’ I asked them to just give him one more night before I made a decision, and they agreed.

  When I called the following morning to see how he was, the vet nurse said, ‘Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but he’s standing up.’

  I was trying not to get too excited. ‘Did you stand him up, and then he stood by himself?’ I asked.

  ‘No, we came into work this morning and he was standing up in his cage. He managed to get up by himself.’

  Craig and I brought him home. His tail never worked again, and his back legs wasted away, but somehow his nerves had repaired enough for him to stand up. If he was feeling particularly cocky, he could sort of trot and shuffle around. That was how he got around in the last two years of his life.

  By then Aura had come into our lives, and they ended up having two litters of puppies together, and he continued to have a very full life with us. I didn’t care how much I had to lift him up or down from places, or carry him when he became tired, he was still with us and enjoying life.

  When we were in Melbourne working on Charlotte’s Web, his kidneys had begun to fail. Twenty-four hours before we put him down, he unmistakably told me that it was time for him to go. It was a Sunday and he looked pleadingly into my eyes, all day, and as painful as it was for me to recognise this, I knew it was time. The vet came out to the house that we were renting and helped him go to sleep in my arms, rather than in the sterile veterinary surgery.

  We gave him a little going-away dinner. I lay on the floor with him. I held him and kissed him. I stroked his silky soft ears. I cried and looked into his smiley eyes and I thanked him over and over. It was Snoopy’s time.

  One cloudy morning we were driving to the set of Charlotte’s Web, when Craig turned to me and told me he’d had the coolest dream the night before. He told me it had included us getting married on top of Beechmont Hill in our friends’ paddock overlooking the Gold Coast and the ocean at sunrise.

  After he had finished describing his dream, we were both silent for a moment. And then he asked, ‘So, do you want to do that?’

  ‘What? Get married?’ I replied.

  ‘Yea
h.’

  ‘OK.’

  That was pretty much the extent of his proposal. I gave him a hard time about it later: of all the beautiful places we had been to around the world, he had chosen to propose to me while driving to work through Melbourne’s grey pre-dawn suburbia!

  The friends whose place he’d seen in the dream were Bill and Laurie Bird. Together with their hard-working mum, Sylvia, the Birds run a dairy farm in Maudsland, one kilometre down the road from my place. I had ridden past their place one morning not long after I’d bought my home in Maudsland Road, just as they were taking the dairy cows back to their paddock. I had stopped and I asked if I could muster my young horses with them, as it would be a terrific experience for them. They agreed, and that was the start of a beautiful friendship. The Birds are true Queensland farmers, living in the heart of the tinselled fantasia that is the Gold Coast; they built the impressive post-and-rail fence around my property and I loved spending time with them.

  When Craig and I got to work on that grey day, I told another Aussie trainer, Joanne Kostiuk, about Craig’s proposal. She and I had become good friends. She looked at me and asked, ‘So you’re getting married?’ and I said, ‘I’m not sure.’ When I thought back to our conversation, Craig hadn’t actually asked me formally—he’d just asked whether it was something I wanted to do.

  ‘Well you should probably find out,’ she laughed.

  I went to Craig later in the day and said, ‘Well, are we doing that or not?’

  And he looked at me and asked, ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Well, yes, we will then,’ he said and went back to work.

  I went back to Joanne and said, ‘Yes, we’re getting married.’

  ‘Can I tell everyone?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. But of course she did.

  Well, you know what people are like—especially in a closed community like a film crew. One person told another, and it spread so quickly that soon people were coming up and congratulating us.

  Craig was probably thinking, ‘How did that happen? I just said I had a dream . . .’

  CHAPTER 45

  Elephant Tales

  Towards the end of production for Charlotte’s Web, Jim Stockley rang and asked if we could go to South Africa to work on an animal film called Elephant Tales, written and directed by Mario Andreacchio. The job would start in June.

  Before we went to South Africa, we set a date in October for the wedding, spoke with Bill and Laurie Bird about using their paddock, and found a terrific venue at a friend’s picturesque polo complex for the reception. I sent off the wedding invitations, hoping we would be finished on Elephant Tales and back from South Africa with enough time to finalise the wedding plans when we returned.

  Elephant Tales was being filmed at the Stockleys’ property as well as at a few extra locations in a nearby game park called Tala. It’s a kids’ movie about two elephant brothers, Tutu and Zef, who go in search of their mother, who has been taken by poachers; along the way they have adventures and befriend some baby animals. For us as trainers it meant a lot of time sitting on the grass, letting the various young animals bond. We had a cheetah, giraffe, chimp and warthog, plus lion cubs, baboons, and of course the four young elephants, most of them owned by Jim Stockley and Brian Boswell.

  It was a wonderfully relaxed film to work on, largely because Mario was so accommodating with the animals. When the script called for the baby chimp to sit on top of the giraffe’s head so as to get a better view, we explained that neither of the animals would be particularly happy with that situation, and Mario quickly changed it so the baby chimp climbs up a tree next to the giraffe.

  Jim was the head trainer; his son Jamie, Craig and I were additional animal trainers. Craig and Jim concentrated mostly on the elephants, but helped with all of the animals.

  On one occasion when we were in the wildlife reserve, someone on the crew shouted, ‘Rhino!’ A nearby wild rhino had smelled the elephants and come over to investigate. The entire crew was so professional: there was no unnecessary screaming or running. A rhino can attack baby elephants and of course people. Everyone calmly got out of the rhino’s way and climbed into the vehicles, while Jim and Craig took the elephants behind one of the trucks so the rhino couldn’t see them. Thankfully, rhinos have extremely poor eyesight and he wandered off after not finding anything of interest.

  The Stockleys once again made us feel like part of the family, and while we were working on the film Jamie started going out with his now wife Dana, who was working as the director’s personal assistant. It was a dream job, to work in that environment with those animals and people, and we are all patiently waiting for Mario to ring with the green light for Elephant Tales Two! It’s a perfect example of why we feel guilty calling our job ‘work’.

  After we’d finished work on Elephant Tales, we flew Craig’s mother Cleo over to South Africa for a holiday so she could meet the Stockleys. She had always wanted to meet them because she knew Stafford had known Jim’s dad. She adored them and, naturally, they adored her. They knew how to make her feel like a queen of the circus world and, like everybody else, they were amazed at how witty, savvy, capable and independent she was for a woman of eighty years.

  To show her what we had grown to love in that country we took her to some beautiful game parks. We spent her last few nights in South Africa at a gorgeous game park and then we drove her to the airport to fly back to Australia.

  On the way to the airport she said she felt sick, so we stopped the car. Thinking she might be car sick, we suggested she sit in the front seat. However, by the time we arrived at the airport I was feeling a bit sick as well, so we thought that the prawns Cleo and I had eaten the night before may not have been as fresh as they should have been. Craig hadn’t eaten them and he was fine.

  I was sick for a couple of days, but it wasn’t really bad food poisoning. However, Cleo was very ill. The airline’s ground crew took her into the airport lounge before the flight; she deteriorated further on the flight, and the flight crew almost took her off the plane in Singapore, to hospitalise her, but she hung in there and kept on going to Australia.

  She didn’t recover from that for over a month and she never fully regained her appetite again. She kept saying the food poisoning had knocked her around, but I kept worrying that it was something else, especially when she started losing weight.

  CHAPTER 46

  A night wedding, is it?

  While we were in Africa I kept getting emails saying, ‘I’m sorry, I think there’s a typo on your wedding invitation. It says 6 am—shouldn’t it be 6 pm? A night wedding, is it?’ And I would have to reply, ‘Ah, no, it is at 6 am.’ Some people rang saying, ‘That’s so typical of you—why would you do that?’ Others said, ‘What a fantastic idea—that’s so you and Craig.’ We wanted to get married early in the morning because that’s how it was in Craig’s dream, and because it happens to be our favourite time of day. In Queensland in October, sunrise is soon after four, and Craig had originally been keen to get married then, but I said, ‘No, I think we need to draw the line somewhere—the light will still be beautiful at six.’ I had already received so much grief about the whole thing, particularly from Cleo, that I thought we should compromise. The feeling would still be there at six in the morning.

  On the morning itself I don’t think anyone thought it was a good idea, except Craig and me. It was cold and windy, and the view wasn’t as good as we’d hoped, because of the sea mist. But it was still a beautiful feeling when everyone came up there to share it with us.

  Craig had asked me what I wanted to arrive in for the wedding. We had recently bought a Silverado Chevy ute, which had always been a dream car for both of us, and I knew he would want to arrive in that. From the beginning I knew that I wouldn’t be arriving in a horse-drawn wagon but on horseback. I wanted to keep it a surprise for Craig, though, so I told him I would ask Wayne if we could borrow his big Ford F250 for me to arrive in.

/>   Craig wanted his son, Nelson, to be his best man. Together with his good mate Darryl ‘Woodsie’ Woods, the three of them were going to arrive at the wedding in our Chev. As far as Craig was aware, Wayne’s F250 would bring Columbia, who was to be the flower girl, together with Mum, Tamz, Fred and me.

  At first I’d thought that just my two matrons of honour, Tamzin and Freda, would arrive with me on horseback. They can both ride and we have nice quiet horses. But then I got more ambitious and thought, ‘I wish all of our horses could come.’ Finally, it dawned on me that there were so many beautiful ladies who had been really important and significant in my life, and who all rode. So as well as Tamzin and Freda, whom Craig knew about, I secretly phoned Heidi, Lydia, Brit and Melody, a close friend from my pony club days. It all took a bit of organising, but so many people helped put it together. In the pre-dawn, the seven horses were secretly loaded and driven up Beechmont Hill, where they were saddled by my cowboy friend Martie Addy and some other friends and stood ready for our arrival. I rode J’dore, our beautiful white Andalusian mare, Tamzin rode Bosito, Freda rode Bullet, Heidi rode Nakota, the horse Wayne and I had bred, Brit rode Cassity, Lydia rode her black thoroughbred Abby, and Melody rode a horse of Marty’s.

  After Craig had ‘proposed’, I’d gone bridal dress shopping in Melbourne. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I felt like Julia Roberts in the scene from Pretty Woman when she was rejected by the shop staff. It was awful! I went alone and the staff were rude to me; the dresses they showed me had huge meringue skirts or that clingy body-hugging look. I didn’t like either style very much, so decided to design my own.