Four legged friends

I can’t imagine life without four-legged friends. This is part one of four about our bond with magnificent hairy beasts. We never say the word ‘dog' because our hairy beasts are much more than that...

I was born in Ross-on-Wye, in the glorious county of Herefordshire, England - just think of Hobbits from the Shire and you will get the picture.

The third of a family of four children I vaguely remember my first family hound Wendy the Corgi, who by the time I arrived on the scene, was very old with fruity-smelling breath and failing eyesight.

She had her basket under the stairs in the kitchen and we used to take her for walks across the fields behind our house. Wendy was a kind hound, here, there and everywhere: very much my Mummy Margaret’s girl. I was fascinated by how short her legs were compared to her long body with that long, probing snout.

Wendy the Corgi (thanks to my brother Martin for the image)

Why a Corgi you may ask?

Well, it most probably had something to do with the late great Queen Elizabeth II, who from an early age, had a real passion for Pembroke Corgis. The breed was a familiar sight in Wales in the ‘30s but not so common in England.

Like the old English sheepdog in the Dulux paint adverts of the ‘70s and ‘80s and the Andrex toilet tissue puppy adverts which have run for over half a century (sadly limited to UK television), they call it the ‘101 Dalmatians Effect’.

Elizabeth Regina made Corgis cool to have in the family and in turn allowed her to show a more human and loving side.

I can’t remember what happened as I was very young but one day Wendy was not there anymore and had gone over the rainbow bridge.

Tudor Genevieve

Jenny, our English Springer Spaniel

My bond with hounds really began when Jenny joined the family - a pedigree chocolate and white Springer Spaniel whose official Kennel Club name was Tudor Genevieve.

I remember we were so excited and all six of us - we were four children by then - drove to collect our new puppy from the breeder. When we returned home, we sat together on the sofa and she walked plinkety plonk across our legs like playing piano keys - instant love.

We put a clock in her basket as it is supposed to mimic the sound of the mother’s heartbeat.

My father Rolie (Roland) Morris was a self-employed agricultural engineer and Jenny would go to work with him every day. At the time he had a workshop based on a farm owned by Charlie Green in a village called Bridstow just outside Ross.

Dad would often be called out to local farms to repair combine harvesters, tractors and a host of other mechanical devices which often involved him fabricating spares rather than buying the more expensive equivalent from the big companies. He was a genius!

My father Rolie and Jenny

Jenny was his constant companion but when she bounded into the house, she belonged to all of us - there was so much love and we had so much fun. There’s nothing like seeing a Springer Spaniel bouncing through a field of corn or racing downhill, teeth grinning and ears flapping as she ran past you with a close ‘flyby’, just like the Red Arrows (the Royal Airforce Acrobatic display team) who were a constant sight in our part of the world as they used to practise in the skies above Ross all the time.

In the wintertime, when we used to sit in front of the fire to warm up, Jenny would plonk herself down and lean into you, pushing with such force that she slowly edged you out of the way so that she could take up pole position in front of the fire for maximum heat! She got so roasty-toasty hot it’s a wonder her fur never caught alight.

Howling hound

We always had music in the house thanks to our prized stereo system, which legend has it had some connection with Marc Bolan who used to live nearby at one point.

My first instrument was the harmonica and as soon as I started playing, Jenny would tilt her head back and start singing/howling - her lips pouted leaving a cute little triangle shape through which she sang. Adorable.

In terms of training, Jenny responded much better to my father than any of us - there was no stopping her and you had to run fast when she was on the lead before you could let her free in the field behind our house: a free spirit.

One year, I decided to enter Jenny into a local dog show in Herefordshire. All I had to do was get her to walk by my side on command up and down the field in front of the judges. Well, it was a complete disaster! Jenny was so excited with all the people around, she started running and dragged me up the field and back again. It was embarrassing but at the same time comedic as I had absolutely zero control over her!

I also entered her for the Best in Show (breeding) competition and remember one of the judges saying to me when he looked at Jenny “Not you again”!!

Despite that, this cloud had a silver lining and we came home with a third in show rosette!! Woohoo!!!

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Spiritual

The one thing I found almost spiritual about hounds is that Jenny always seemed to know when any of us were upset. She would come up to us and give us that extra bit of love we needed or just come and hang out, staying close by.

Around this time I concluded that I much preferred animals to humans.

As with most young female hounds, Jenny was spayed as Mum and Dad didn’t want to breed any puppies and sadly, she used to suffer badly with what they called phantom pregnancies. She became very broody, filling her basket under the stairs with her toy giraffe and teddy bears, tending to them like real puppies.

To help heal her it was decided that we needed a new puppy in the family - someone for Jenny to care for and teach all her hairy beast ways.

Samronski

So then there were two when Samronski, a white and chocolate Springer Spaniel mixed with a Collie joined the family.

Sam as a puppy

Jenny was not amused at first and was a bit grumpy but Samuel had such a joyful and playful heart, it didn’t bother him. He just persisted until Jenny decided to accept him.

Jenny and Sam in my father’s van

So now there were two hounds to take to work. By this time my older brother Martin had finished his college course and had joined the family business - M.A.R.S. - Motor and Agricultural Repair Services aka Martin and Rolie Services.

Martin and Jenny

Martin and Dad worked hard with long days, six and a half days a week with only Sunday afternoon off. I remember Dad coming back very late one night, totally fed up because Jenny had led Samronski off on some random adventure into the countryside and he had spent hours trying to find them. He was not amused.

The bird

My Father also bred Pheasants at one stage and remember he would take Jenny away on what they called ‘shooting holidays’. Springers are perfect gun dogs on the ground and in water. They have soft mouths and never damage the birds.

We had a gun cabinet at the end of our passageway at the side of the house which housed my Father’s shotgun. Living in the countryside this was a normal thing to have and my Father was a responsible gun owner - it was always locked.

Two hounds are not much more work than one but saying that we were a big family and shared the feeding and walking: I always remember that smell of Pedigree Chum (a classic British wet dog food) mixed with some dry meal.

There’s something about hounds that touches the depths of your soul. Their love is unconditional; something almost unique between humans and our four-legged friends.

Then, there was that fateful day when I had been away for the weekend and returned home to find that Mum and Dad had put Jenny down in my absence.

The vet had discovered she had throat cancer and she was in pain and struggling to breathe. God how I sobbed. I didn’t even get to say goodbye - something that still hurts when I think of it. I asked why couldn’t they wait for me to come home but it was the kindest thing they could have done for her.

So it goes.

Moving on to January 1992 and Martin dropped off Sam at home. He was about to leave when Samronski came running back out. Sensing something wasn’t right he went inside the house and discovered my Dad had died of a heart attack. What a shock it must have been to see him like that. He was told that morning he had a heart condition, they changed his medication and he died that evening.

He was 62 and I was 24 in the second year of my studies in Media & Performance at Salford University.

So it goes.

Sam was such a comfort to Mum during these times. Martin would call by the house every morning to pick him up and take him off to work, along with the customary packed lunch of cheese and cucumber sandwiches, a chocolate Club or Penguin biscuit - or if he was lucky a Twix bar - and a flask of coffee that Mum had made for him - Martin that is, not Sam :)

Samronski Comrade off to work with his packed lunch

They were dark times especially as my Mum was gradually being stolen from us as she had started acting strange after losing her mother Betty a couple of years before Dad had died. Martin also noticed something was wrong when one day, she had made his sandwiches using mouldy bread - totally out of character.

Let’s get the heartache out of the way.

Mum came to stay with me in Manchester for a week and during that time, we had a fire at home, started by a badly wired kettle lead in the kitchen. Sam died from smoke inhalation and the house was unlivable. So Mum stayed with me in a flat I shared with a friend called Hedley Aylott for a few months. He didn’t like the fact my Mum was staying there and decided to be absent most of the time.

Mum and I shared my futon bed and I had to keep a close eye on her as she wasn’t right. I remember the day she held up a plastic bottle and asked if she could use that in her bath thinking it was bubble bath. It wasn’t - it was Domestos (a UK brand of bleach).

After visits to the hospital for ECGs and various tests, Mum stayed with my sisters and brother too and then we received the diagnosis - she had an aggressive case of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

We were fortunate to be able to secure her a place at Dovecott, a newly opened care home just outside Ross. It was an Old Victorian sandstone house with huge high-ceiling rooms, proper bedrooms and vintage character set in beautiful grounds in the countryside.

Mum was very happy there - as happy as she could be anyway - and every morning would draw the living room curtains and go outside to feed the birds.

So it goes.

Adopting everyone else’s hound

So after the heartache, my life became devoid of hounds. With long hours at work and living in the city centre of Manchester, it would not have been fair to have had a hairy companion, especially when back in the early ‘00s the local park near Ancoats (now gentrified) was full of used syringes and condoms.

So that special kind of love was to be shared through the other hounds I met along the way.

Me, Sam, my older sister Dawn, Mum and Tim Allen from my band Megiddo

Next…

Things changed when I moved to the Isle of Man in 2008 and met my future husband Simon and his hounds Beavis and then Hummock. But that’s a story for next week…