If there’s one thing that frays my nerves a little, it’s people who are obsessed with their babies and children and talk about nothing else. Imagine my horror when it dawned on me that I had become one of them, only, in my case with my dog! I’ve only had her for 6 months but already can’t imagine life without her. I suppose the one plus is that I’ll never need to worry about her throwing a tantrum in the middle of the supermarket or bawling her head off on the bus.

It’s a good 26 years since I got my first dog and I’ve always wanted another one, so I really don’t know why it took me so long to get one. Maybe I’m just a commitment phobe! Animals can be a lot less complicated than humans at times, so perhaps I’ve been barking up the wrong tree for the last quarter century if you pardon the pun.

Having been heavily involved in animal welfare for years and witnessing some of the most appalling suffering humans can inflict on animals, it’s really good to be able to give something back to the animal world and at least make one needy dogs life a bit happier.

When Holly first came to me, she was in a bad way. She weighed 62kg, the equivalent of nearly 10 stone, was shaped like a barrel, and could barely lift her head up. She would lumber and waddle her way round the block, trailing behind at every step, back legs bowed under the weight of her body and lying down at regular intervals. Her brow would droop over her eyes and she looked so forlorn, like everything in life was just far too much effort.

Watching her over the last few months, her transformation has been nothing short of miraculous. After initial blood tests showed she had an underactive thyroid, she was put on the relevant medication as well as a prescription diet (much to her disgust). Her exercise regime began with very short but regular walks that gradually increased with time. I’ll never forget, last summer, shortly after getting her, I tried a little longer walk with her at the beach down at Longniddry in East Lothian. Once we got back to the car, Holly was so exhausted she just lay down at the car door and had no energy to get back into the car. After 20 minutes rest and a phone call to mum to see if she had any bright ideas, we decided to try and coax her in from the opposite side of the car through the passenger door. Thank goodness, it worked, or that would have been me stuck at Longniddry Bents for the night!

Now, nearly two stone lighter, it is so rewarding watching the change in this lovely dog. She’s become cheeky and mischievous with a lovely personality and really seems to be enjoying life now. She now keeps me on my toes as she can move a lot quicker than before and has become quite sly. Only the other night, I’d made a curry and had just sat down with a bowl and a couple of chapattis, resting the plate on the arm of the couch. Out of nowhere, this big black nose and cheeky face appeared from underneath the plate and pinched one of the chapattis! Even on her first trip to the beauty parlour for a shampoo to help her skin, she whipped one of the toys off the bottom display shelf on her way out the door, leaving me to return, red faced apologising for Holly’s shoplifting. As it would have taken her all her effort just to walk out the door a few months ago, never mind exerting a little effort, even if it was to steel a toy, it was really quite amusing.

Along with this new found energy come some of the less appealing doggy traits. As well as the revolting fox pooh rolling incident, comes the equalling socially unacceptable trait of having her wicked way with her bean bag bed. This embarrassing doggy trait (which she kindly displays in particular when we have guests) was something I thought only male dogs did but apparently it’s quite common in unneutered female dogs. My friend bought Holly the loveliest giant ‘Scooby Doo’ bed, which unfortunately, Holly has never used – preferring the comforts of the couch. However, the bed often becomes the object of Her Ladyships hormonal desires as poor Scooby get dragged from the living room to the kitchen and back again on a regular basis as Holly gives Scooby the once over! At least it helps her burn a few more calories I suppose.

When she does eventually settle down on the couch in the evening, she will lie flat on her back, legs in the air, head hanging over the edge of the couch, jowls flapping. As she gets her tummy rubbed she gets more and more relaxed and slowly but surely slides off the couch to land on the floor! Up she gets, to start the whole process again.

She really hates the diet dog food and will only eat it if I mix some vegetables through it. The vet says this is fine and as she is now down to 50kg, it doesn’t seem to be doing her any harm.

It really is a pleasure and incredible to watch this dog transform. She has brought much joy to my life in a very short period of time.

One of the sweetest things I watched her do was during the recent bout of heavy snow we had. I had no idea if she had ever even seen snow, but I let her out in the garden to watch her reaction. She looked up at the falling snow flakes landing one by one on the tip of her nose and suddenly, with no warning, started leaping and bounding ecstatically about in the snow like a cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo, it was wonderful to see. Mind you, the last batch of vegetables I mixed through her food were Brussel sprouts, so it may well have simply been the sprouts propelling her round the garden, but I’d like to think, she suddenly knew what it was like to enjoy life at long last.

I have to report that Her Ladyship has right, royally disgraced herself. We had a serious falling out last week. She and I are very much hoping to take part in a sponsored walk in May for a fantastic animal charity called Animals Asia and have been looking for nice places to do longer walks, in preparation. Therefore, I was delighted to find a lovely big field within walking distance from our house where I could let Holly off the lead for a wee run-around.

Well, she most certainly gave me the run-around in style last week!

We started out up to the field on a beautiful bright, blue skied, sunny morning with a distinct hint of spring in the air. Once we reached the field, I let Holly off the lead. Away she trotted with a little hop, skip and a jump of enthusiasm as her lighter frame now allows, contentedly sniffing all the new smells around her. Actually, Holly doesn’t really ‘sniff’ as such but more accurately acts like she’s snorting for truffles, decibels increasing as she blows, sorry, goes!

We followed all the well trodden paths and it really was a beautiful day. The walk was so enjoyable, I decided to go a little further afield and off the beaten track. BIG mistake!

Holly lagged behind a little at one point, spending a long time sniffing something of great interest to her. And then I saw it, the focus of her undivided attention. A great big pile of steaming hot fox pooh.

Like car crash television, before my very eyes and with my feet unable to run fast enough to stop her, she launched herself at the offensive pile head first, like a polar bear bursting through the ice for tasty morsels below. She started sliding around, rubbing her head, neck and ears, coating her fur in the stench like she was wallowing in sweet smelling candyfloss! The horror of the reality dawned on me as I finally reached the pongy pooch to find even her chain link collar covered in the green and brown stinking mess. I had no alternative but to try and pull her away, but her size still makes parental control rather difficult at times and even more frustrating in such a ‘rolling in fox pooh’ emergency. It was a highly traumatic incident – for me anyway!

On arriving home she was promptly marched out into the back garden to be hosed down. I can barely write about it as I’m feeling nauseous just recalling the whole event!

She was bathed and bathed, dried with the hairdryer, then smothered in scented talc and brushed and brushed and yet still, she stank.

I phoned the dog groomer Holly has been to in the past, and she suggested wiping vinegar and warm water on her and online, they suggested tomato ketchup to mask the smell. So I had the choice of her smelling like a hotdog or a chippy, but anything was better than the rank smell of fox pooh, so I chose the chippy.

What a relief when the vinegar began to mask the smell, but sadly it was short lived. All too soon the rancid odour began to permeate through the vinegar. The paint on the walls started blistering, the paper started peeling, the windows started cracking and my eyes were watering and bloodshot. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little but I have to adequately portray the extent of my suffering after Her Ladyships revolting indulgence!

The smell lingered for a good few days, despite more vinegar, talc and baby wipes. The only thing that got rid of it completely was another visit to Holly’s beauty parlour for a shampoo and blow dry before she returned to her full glory.

The experience and smell was so awful, I could not understand why dogs got so much pleasure from doing this. My old dog Tulsa used to love to roll in cow pats, so I knew it wasn’t just Holly, so I turned to the internet for an explanation of this very socially unacceptable doggie habit.

Apparently, it is a trait handed down from their ancestors. The dogs roll in the offensive substance to disguise their own scent. This enables them to ‘blend’ into their environment while they are stalking their prey.

I have now had a long chat with Holly, I talked, and she had no choice but to listen! I have politely informed her that I’m sure this behaviour will be very useful when she’s next stalking a herd of wilder beast in the Serengeti, but until then, she has a nice tasty bowl of dog food at home waiting for her and she’s not going to need to stalk anything anytime soon!

Oh the aches and pains just never go away. It’s true what they say, old age never comes alone and it’s certainly not eased when a 6 foot, muscle mountain of a personal trainer will not let up on his mission to inflict pain and suffering on the rotund.

Sadly, as the credit crunch forced me to tighten my belt, I have had to drop one session a month with Tarzan. I did this on the strict promise to myself that I would go for a couple of extra swims the week I didn’t have him. I really must learn that these types of promises to myself are never a very good idea. After a week with no additional exercise apart from slightly longer walks with Holly, I am really suffering after yesterdays session back in the gym. Much as I love him, if Tarzan tells me to ‘embrace the pain’ one more time, I may go and embrace the nearest and heaviest dumbbell and drop it on his toe! I think given the circumstances, I did quite well yesterday as I managed to leg press the equivalent of 17 ½ stone. However, although in general I’m pretty good at weights, I am utterly hopeless at lifting weights above my head. I can pull them and push them, but please don’t ask me to lift anything heavier than a cotton bud above my head!

I’ve had fun with my mum the last few days. In my infinite wisdom, I bought her a mobile phone for her 80th birthday. Mum is an incredibly fit, healthy and fiercely independent octogenarian and I thought a mobile would be a sensible and practical way to help her retain that independence. As someone who has never been defeated by anything new, learning computer skills, German and even Braille in her later years, she’s now tackling the art of text messaging with unflinching determination. I would have been very happy with her just remembering to switch her mobile phone on when she went out the door, but she has once again, amazed me with her stoic effort to learn new things.

When I first bought her phone, I put a few of the numbers I thought she would use the most in her address book and I also got friends and family who had mobiles, to send her ‘Happy Birthday’ texts so they would be there in her ‘in box’ to surprise her when she switched on her phone. So imagine everyone else’s surprise when a variety of text messages were flying to various different phones, and none of them to the correct people in the weeks after her birthday! Text messages were sent to landlines and mysterious silent phonecalls were made to confused recipients. While this was going on, my best advice to mum, was just don’t start breathing heavily when you’re playing with your phone in case you accidentally give someone a saucy phonecall. I think there’s a real risk she may launch a nuclear missile somewhere in the world and become a threat to national security but you’ve got to give her ten out of ten for trying!

Holly’s still doing well and she’s lost nearly 2 stone now. We’ve been managing longer walks as she loses weight. She even managed a little provocative swagger for the neighbourhoods male dogs as she regained a little control over her rather portly rear end as it’s slowly reducing in size. We’ve had a terrible cold snap of late with lots of snow and ice which has caused me to land flat on my back on two occasions while out for our evening constitutionals as the temperatures drop. If the cold spell continues one of us is going to throw a hip, and I can be pretty certain it won’t be Holly! An observation I have made since becoming the proud owner of a four legged friend, is that it makes me laugh at how dog owners have these little petite poop scoop bags to clean up after their pooches. I need bags the size of bin liners to deal with her ladyships offerings, but I suppose all that weight has to go somewhere!

A little note! You may have noticed that the last few entries were written over a longer period than just the 17th to the 23rd February. I've been keeping a diary of Holly's and my 'journeys' for a while now and have just posted them to my blog recently. But we are now slap bang up to date and what happens from now on, happens in 'real time'. I hope you continue to enjoy our blog!

For the most part, I love my job as a driving instructor, but some times I could see it far enough, especially in the winter when it’s cold, dark, the weather’s miserable and everyone seems to get in the car with some sort of ailment, sneezing, coughing and spluttering over my car, kindly sharing all their germs with me.

One thing I have learned during my time in this particular career, is that communication is vital. If you and your learner are hurtling along at a great rate of knots towards a potential hazard, your communication skills and prompt and precise delivery of an instruction need to be top notch in order to avoid any potential nerve shattering moments.

I have learned very quickly to choose my words and terminology carefully. If for example, I say ‘stay right over to the left’ or ‘slow down quicker’ it can evoke an interesting reaction from my learner. Experience taught me very quickly, that when instructing my learner to brake, to put the descriptive word first. If I instructed my learner to ‘brake gently’ all they would hear would be ‘brake’ and the ‘gently’ aspect of the instruction was completely lost on them as my whiplash came along nicely. Therefore I learned very quickly to say ‘gently brake’ or ‘slowly brake’. Communication is the key in so many aspects of life but never more so, than with driving tuition.

This week I learned there can be a flip side to the issue of communication that can sometimes provide much amusement. I was passed the details of a young boy who’d just turned 17 and wanted to learn to drive. It turns out he lived with his grandma and when I called and asked for him, his grandmother answered. ‘Is Daniel there’ I enquired, ‘Hang on’ came the reply ‘He’s outside with his birds’…Blimey! I thought – how many women can a young lad of 17 have? On further investigation, it turned out he bred budgies and I laughed at how easily words can be misinterpreted from all angles! Imagining this young boy outside with his personal Hareem, provided one of the more amusing moments in my current career.

Young Holly’s been doing well this week with her diet and exercise which is more than I can say for my good self. I met a friend for tea last night. We’re planning to go to the gym together and give each other moral support and decided to have one last blow out meal ( sad thing is, we’ve been doing this for the last four weeks as we discuss which gym to join! ). The pair of us seem to have this insatiable appetite for curly fries and onion rings, so after suitably confusing the waitress with our vegetarian and vegan requirements for our sizzling fajitas, we ordered our side portions of onion rings and curly fries (if Tarzan knew about our decadence, he would most certainly be planning a torturous routine for my next gym session). Anyway, the waitress eventually arrived with all our dishes declaring ‘the tables too small’ at which point we had to acknowledge that we may well have been a tad greedy. I know, I should be thoroughly ashamed of myself, especially since I’d left my poor sweet portly Holly at home with her boring dry dog food and a bowl of tap water. I hang my head in shame and apologise on record, to the obesely challenged canine community.

She’s certainly moving a bit quicker these days. Only yesterday she suddenly saw a cat and darted wildly off in hot persuit, only to sit down in the middle of the road deciding she’d exerted herself quite enough for one day, but the initial effort was pretty impressive I must say.

So, now my docile lumbering dog can move quicker than me. I must pass on the curly fries next time!

I can be such an idiot sometimes. Not just borderline stupid, but an all out mind-blowing, foot firmly in the mouth, prize idiot. I have recently formed an arrangement with another driving school. We refer pupils to each other if they come to us from areas that either of us doesn’t cover. I have normally been communicating with the girl that owns the school, but as she has recently gone into hospital, I have been instructed to communicate with her colleague.

I received a text on Saturday asking if I covered a certain well known area (I dare not mention the name, as I feel I have offended enough people for one week!). As the said area is a haven for drug dealers and the less salubrious of societies characters and given the fact that I have already had a few bad experiences with pupils from there, I tactfully (or so I thought) declined any pupils from this area. My text read along the lines ‘Since this area is a notoriously rough and seedy area, I think I’ll pass but thank you very much anyway.’ You can imagine how much I wanted the ground to swallow me up when back came the reply ‘Thanks a lot…that’s where I live!’.

In my defence, instructors seldom pass on pupils from their own area but hey, if you’re going to dig yourself a hole, make it a big one!

Talk about having to open my mouth to change my socks.

Holly’s been plodding her way through the week in her usual docile lumbering manner. I’m positive she’s got the canine version of sleep apnoea. As we sit together on the sofa in the evening, she often heaves her upper body onto my lap, kindly painfully digging her elbows into me, whilst making herself comfortable. As she gets more relaxed without a care in the world, the snoring starts and inevitably the TV needs to be turned up as the decibel level of her snoring escalates. This goes on and on, muzzle vibrating, nostrils flaring, jowls flapping, walls shaking, and then suddenly, it stops. Silence. Nothing. No body movement. Deathly still. What on earth’s happened? Has she died? There’s nothing else for it but to give her a sharp prod…and then it happens. An enormous, rip roaring, earthquake inducing snort that any pig would be proud of, one which comes dangerously close to inhaling the contents of the living room and she’s off again contentedly resuming her snoring and the TV goes up a little bit more.

I think Holly must have tuned into the prize idiot vibes I’ve clearly been giving off this week. Where her teatime is concerned, I’ve tried to get her into a routine of having it at 5pm. However, sometimes this has to vary slightly depending on the hours I’m teaching, so on occasion, she has it at 4pm. Unfortunately, this results in a battle of wills between us every day around 4pm in the hope she’ll get her tea a bit early. I try to ignore her whingeing demands and stick to my guns until 5pm. However, one day this week she got the better of me. I was particularly stressed and she was particularly demanding so I gave in and fed her early then went out for the evenings work. On my return home around 8.30pm she looked at me with disdain, lumbered into the kitchen and started throwing her bowl around. I then had an almighty CRAFT moment (Can’t Remember a Flipping Thing) and seriously couldn’t remember if I had fed her. I was so worried I’d forgotten, I gave her another tea. She’s now cottoned on to my daft memory lapse and this has resulted in, every evening this week, Holly throwing her bowl around in the hope she’ll get two dinners! I’ve now politely explained to her ladyship that I may be an idiot most of the time but not ALL of the time.

I also learnt this week that Holly’s a bit of a floosy. On our walk the other morning, she started flirting outrageously with the bin men and managed to get a bonio off one of them. Trust Holly to find the only bin man in the Lothian’s to carry a dog biscuit.

I had a week off from Tarzan, my trainer as he was away for the weekend. I ordered a Chinese Takeaway to celebrate, so I think I can quite honestly say that between Holly’s multiple dinners and my takeaway blowout, hers and my diets are both up the Swanee this week! Ah well, tomorrows another day.

FAT, FORTY AND REDUNDANT

Talk about a triple whammy. It wasn’t one of my better years I must say, being made redundant the year I turned 40 – sure to induce a mid-life crisis, on top of losing count of the number of years spent unsuccessfully battling the bulge and feeling like a beach ball with arms and legs, needless to say my self esteem took a fairly steep nosedive!

I’d had a great ten years in a much loved job in animal welfare, earning a reasonable living, enjoying my independence and making plans for the future when, bam, the whole lot came crashing down around my ears and I suddenly had no idea what I was going to do to fix the mess.

So… I embarked on a journey.

First and foremost, I had to get another job. It was daunting to be facing yet another career change at 40 but I retrained to be a driving instructor. I love teaching and helping to change peoples lives but the job provides a fairly high degree of stress and can test your patience somewhat when your learner is sitting at a red light revving the gas like fuel is free, burning the clutch until the stench is unbearable and flames are leaping out from underneath your bonnet (okay, so I exaggerate a little) but you get the picture! When you’ve got a queue of irate, horn honking, fist waiving impatient drivers behind you, it takes a great deal of willpower not to get out the car myself with a double-barrelled shotgun but I don’t suppose that would set a particularly good example. It’s a job and it pays the bills, if only just given the current inflation busting cost of living, but it’s not where I ultimately want to be. It is a means to an end at the moment while I find another way to earn my millions or my knight in shining armour on his flying Arab charger, gets his finger out and finally beats a path to my door.

Next, as my working hours at last allowed, I got myself a much wanted dog. She’s called Holly and she’s a four year old black lab who’s had a pretty rotten life so far. She’s been forced to have litter after litter of puppies, been stuck in a cage and fed rubbish and hence is a rather portly young lady in dire need of a strict diet and exercise regime. Yes, I know, we’ve got so much in common. At least I can walk a little further than her. I took her a slightly longer than normal walk the other day and she had to have a lie down half way through. Being the size of a small bear, carrying her home was completely out of the question. I thought I was going to have to go home, get the car and come back and pick her up, either that or get on the hotline to Bernard Hunter and get him to pop over with one of his cranes. We eventually made it home only for her to collapse in a heap on the living room floor and start her outrageous wall shaking, window shattering snoring. Bless her, her excess folds of skin affect her nasal passages resulting in this socially questionable behaviour never endearing in a lady – yes, okay, another thing we have in common!

Next step in my life changing journey was to get a personal trainer. I was managing to do quite a lot of swimming but I wanted to do more and besides, there’s always one directionally challenged swimmer that does widths while everyone else is doing lengths and it can get a tad annoying! Anyway, back to Tarzan (my trainer, my nickname!), he’s very easy on the eye but he’s certainly not easy on me! He puts me through my paces every week at the gym and I sometimes I think his sole objective is to kill me as I crawl out the gym every Sunday night on my hands and knees, begging for mercy, but I have to believe it’s doing me good. I’m on a mission! I’m going to ignore the fact that I’m on the wrong side of forty, probably more likely to be run over by a steamroller than find a nice non Neanderthal, non knuckle scraping, chest beating man who doesn’t feel emasculated by an independent woman with a brain, and I’m going to reinvent myself. Forty’s the new thirty as they say and it is my educated belief that age only really matters if you’re a cheese or a fine wine, so here goes……I hope you’ll join me on my continued journey to being Fit, Fabulous and well….Forty plus!