Year: 2008

A lovely dedicated post.

Michele sent me.

I bet your greyhound takes a lot of keeping up with 🙂

Our pooch after Scruff was Charlie (the dog). He was a short haired golden retriever. Whereas Scruff would lope along and eat up the ground without much apparent effort, Charlie was a true athlete of a dog. I’m quick but he could blow me away for speed.

It’s a shame I don’t have any earlier pictures of Scruff, the two I have date from my university days when Scruff was getting old. We have one somewhere from Scruff combining two of his favourite things :

Being on a long walk
Going SPLAT! in a muddy puddle

If a dog could grin, that’s what Scruff would be doing after finding a puddle and turning around to look at us before going SPLAT :-).

Oh, he was just beautiful. I loved reading about him, and he was lucky to have found a safe home with you. We have a rescued racing greyhound, so there’s special place in my heart for rescued dogs.

Here via michele, I think for the first time!

This post is dedicated to Charlie the cat. My thoughts are with Linda.

It’s cold, I’m hungry
My knight approaches,
She rides a pale horse.
Maybe she has some food ?

She reaches her home and soon
An angel leaves some scraps
It’s not much I know and they don’t want it
But to me, it’s more precious than gold.
They won’t let me in, that’s ok.
I’ll lie down by the doors,
I’m not in the way.
My coat will keep me warm.

The doors open and I’m still here,
They beckon me in. Have I found a home ?
I’ll do my best, I promise.
It’s nice and warm in here,
And a small thing is hugging me.
(author’s note – the small thing is me, aged 6)

What have I done wrong ?
The Big Walking Man is shouting.
I’m in trouble I know,
Sorry about the puddle on the floor.
More hugs, I’m not in trouble.
It was the small thing after all.

It’s late, dark outside.
Master watches the News.
I watch his glass,
When empty it means WALKWALKWALKWALKWALK

Where are they going ?
The doors on the metal box are open,
They want me to get in.
Not having that again, metal box leads to No-Home and hunger.
BARK, tricked – other door shuts before I can get out.
Rattle, rattle, shake, shake, metal box stops.
Oooo, paths, room to run. Better keep up.
BARK – back to the metal box. Not so nasty now.
Rattle, rattle, shake, shake, metal box rolls again.
It’s later, I’m home again.
My bowl is full of food, Scruff happy now.

What’s this ? A ball of fluff.
It has claws. Ow ! Hiding Scruff.
I feel silly. I’m big, patchy thing is titchy.
Hur-hur, can’t get me. I’m under the settee.

My legs hurt now
My back too.
I can barely see
walk’s don’t excite me.
Master carries me to the metal box,
He helps me when my legs will not.

The pain is gone now,
It will never catch me
Cos now I’m chasin’ wabbits
When not walking on the clouds.
I remember my people,
And the love they gave me.
I owed them my life
And repaid by being their friend.

A little bit of background information. Scruff was an Irish Wolfhound, Red Setter cross who found us when we were living out in the country in Northern Ireland. We think he was abandoned and was lucky enough to come across my sister when she was riding her horse, Taffy. He was almost dead from starvation when he plonked himself down on our back doorstep. My mum gave him a few of our scraps, not expecting him to live out the night. He did though and was our devoted friend and companion for the next 15 years. He was a very scared dog for a while though, if my mum and dad shouted at me, my brother or my sister then he’d quite likely have an accident. It took a while before he learned that shouting might not be his fault.

Scruff was a very smart dog, he even learned to connect the sound of the weather bulletin after the news with “WalkTime!”, he also knew to not get too worked up until my dad’s pint glass was empty. He couldn’t quite contain his excitement though – he always started to bounce around when there was about an inch left in that glass. We had a terrible time getting him to be happy in a car, travel meant a lot of hugs and a little trickery was required. But he loved being able to run around some of the country parks that Ireland enjoys.

I called him Scruff because when he appeared, he resembled a big black shaggy mess of a dog. Scruff fit him absolutely perfectly. His most memorable characteristic was his big hairy paws, when he gave you one of those, you knew he was saying please.

I can’t remember whether it was Scruff who hid from Patch the cat or whether it was Tufty the Beagle who hid under the sofa … When we were moving back to England from Ireland, my dad lost Scruff while walking him at my grandparents house. Proof of how smart Scruff was came when Scruff managed to get home, despite us not being at that house long, successfully negotiating several busy roads.

We had to say goodbye to Scruff while I was still at university (10 years ago). While in Ireland, we believe he had a disagreement with a truck driving down the lanes, which led to lots of problems around his back end. Towards the end, his energy was gone and he gave a “Do I have to ?” look when someone said “Walk”. Walk originally being a forbidden word because one mention of it would have led to Scruff bouncing off the ceiling in excitement. The contrast between that and the “Do I have to?” look of pain was heartbreaking.

My family remembers him with love. We will never forget the devotion he gave in return for those first few scraps of food.

You can always rely on friends to pick you up when you’re struggling and I have some of the best 🙂

“The craziecourt like to have me around.”

Of course we do – you’re one of the mad, bad, sad bunch…..

cq

Right – that’s enough of feeling sorry for myself. Whenever I get feeling that I’ve been hard done by or I feel like a cripple, I always try and remind myself :

I have 2 arms, 2 legs, 10 toes, 8 fingers and 2 thumbs.
I’m not an invalid.
I can still run extremely fast (over short distances!)
I’m one of the smartest people I know.
I look younger than I should or deserve to.
I have the respect of my peers for my technical knowledge.
I can make people laugh.
The craziecourt like to have me around.

Life’s not so bad – and I can live with a few aches and pains.

Because of a youth spent running around doing healthy stuff without putting in the training work to prepare for it, I’ve been left with a few legacies … I’ve injured pretty much every piece of my body, the last one to go was my head, which was Wake Up Call Number 2. I’ve had broken, cracked or dislocated bones coming well into double figures now and I’ve torn or pulled or cramped most of my muscles.

Most days, I can ignore it as I’m only feeling 2 or 3 of my more long term injury legacies. Others are more of a struggle though, like today. There’s a bug going around work at the moment, which I think is why some of the other aches have crept up on me and said “hello – you’re going to pay attention to me today”. Being run down tends to lessen the resistance. I could take painkillers but refuse to, the drugs act as a mask which would make me feel ok. However feeling ok would be rather dangerous for me because I’d put those unhappy bones and muscles through things they wouldn’t like, they’d get worse in the long run. So I avoid painkillers, partly cos I know what I’d be like on them, partly because I have no intention of getting hooked on any drug except caffeine or cocoa.

It’s not been too bad a day though, I got to see the person who helped me out almost 3 years ago when I had a confidence crisis. Shame she was getting coffee with some bloke. I didn’t actually stick around but I did get a wave, which cheered me up. Plus we had some good fun banter going around the office. The team I work in gets on really well together, we are comfortable enough that we can banter and not poke wounds that would lead to unnecessary irritation.

Was a busier than average day too, gotta get a staff report done, plus the monthly finance numbers (why do I nearly always put fiance instead of finance ?) needed doing. I’m a victim of having a good idea there – I did some graphs for my finance area to help me figure out what was happening and before I knew it, Da Management went “that looks good, can you do them for the rest of the team too please ?” It lets me keep an eye on people so I’m ok with running those numbers.

Tomorrow should be interesting. Hopefully we’ll get enough interested people for hitting the canteen for a bacon breakfast. My boss’s boss leaves the project and we have a tradition of giving people a certificate summing up their more comical misdeeds when they go. Guess who makes the certificates :-). I can’t show an example because they’d give away too much about what my work is, which would get a few people irritated with me. I have a few worky type things to do but after that I’ll be looking to disappear as early in the afternoon as I can get away with.

The rushing around today actually helped – it gave me an adrenaline charge that helps me with ignoring the various half healed injuries. Doesn’t make standing up or starting to move any easier though ! Plus I get strange looks when I start cussing myself when limping down the corridor. I’m cussing myself for limping usually or as a distraction from the feeling of being poked in the ribs with a carving knife.

So – a day of trying to ignore pain as much as possible. Will hopefully get back into a more positive frame of mind soon, instead of the tending towards depression track that I’m in at the moment.

PS Valentine card check – empty. Quite possibly another cause for me feeling run down. Maybe next year 😉

thanks for the visit
it was as short
as life can be
sometimes

very clever:-)