Happy New Year 2012 - with a Bang!

I can hardly believe that we actually have a New Year's adventure to share already! We rang the New Year in with new friends from St. Mark's church. We'd been very touched to be welcomed in so readily and had enjoyed good food, good conversation, party games, party poppers and had sung merrily together and hugged everyone in the room as the clock struck midnight before a firework display reminded us of our petrified pooch cowering in her crate back at home. We said our thank yous and farewells and headed for the homestead, leaving the revellers to dance the night away. That's when our New Year began! On our return our thoughts tuned more and more into Sally and we wanted to let her sit by our feet for a while as we savoured a little Bower family time around the fire with hot drinks and hugs all round. First things first. I put the kettle on and cut slabs of Christmas cake, Joseph set up the room, lights on, fire in, Tony let Sally out in the garden before we all gathered together to unwind. The unwinding didn't happen! Tony went out in the garden with Sally to keep an eye on her but just as they were returning down the garden path - BANG BANG BANG! Fireworks set off in almost every direction. Sally went berserk! She also bolted. Somehow she found a slim gap between the six foot high fencing posts and she was gone. We could hear her shrill barks for a good 15 minutes (as I am sure could all our neighbours half a mile around)! We called her, Tony walked round the streets but we could not find her. Meanwhile I sat in our cozy lounge concentrating on keeping my stress levels down - not easy. Finally and freakily Sally's barking suddenly stopped followed by the banging of a car door! Only one thing for it... Phone the police... again! Tony circumnavigated the streets one last time before giving up and coming to bed at around 2am, thoughts violently tumbling around our minds of Sally's almost definite abduction and horrific demise. Finally we got some restless and fitful sleep - not a good start to a year for a woman recovering from a heart attack! It was around 3 am that Tony sat bolt upright and woke me saying he'd heard 3 barks. He shot out of bed and ran downstairs. He opened the back door, shouted 'Sally' and sure enough she came trotting straight back in and headed directly for her bed as if the last few hours had been a figment of our New Year's imaginations! Bless her. Happy New Year. God bless you richly in 2012. I wonder what adventures lay ahead?

York Police Station Please

'Let's have a quick walk along the Ings and give Sally a run off before we go out.' suggested Tony just as the light outside was starting to fade. What a good suggestion. We wrapped up - hats - check, coats - check, scarves, gloves - check. It was the day after Boxing Day and Tony's new chair person from work had very kindly invited us round for an evening of festive fun. A lovely gesture, a hand of kindness stretched towards us that meant so much to us especially at this time, having recently relocated to York earlier in the year. We decided, for speed to bundle Sally into the car and we headed off to the nearby 'Park and Ride' car park which has footpaths leading onto the Ings (pasture land along the verge of the River Ouse meandering for miles in either direction). The perfect place for a game of fetch and back to the car again in under half an hour. That was our plan. Not Sally's! By now, having read any of my previous blogs you won't be surprised to hear that. The rest could write itself. You may wonder why I bother... until you read the event that ensued! After watching Sally run rings around us with no intention of returning to us for around half an hour and after calling her name and finally lose sight of her, in light of my weakened heart, we made a conscious decision not to let the stress levels rise and not to be late for our hosts. We left Sally hiding in the bushes and lifted heartfelt and hopeful prayers before picking up our son and heading off for an evening of charades and nibbles. Life is sometimes a little bizarre to say the least! It was 8 pm when we finally returned to the Ings, a torch in hand, 3 silhouettes linking arms, eyes desperately trying to scan the distant darkness, ears alert to any Sally sounds. Nothing, only absolute silence! Our hearts sank. Only one thing for it. We headed home without Sally. Tony thumbed through the phone book failing to find the number for York police station. I tried to stay calm, I really did. I made a cup of tea but then lost it. 'Please just phone directory enquiries and phone the police now!' The stress was getting to us all by this point. In the time we'd moved here we'd already needed to phone the fire brigade and ambulance services, now here we were, unbelievably on the verge of phoning the police too: hat trick! 'Excuse me officer we've lost our dog, a border collie, what, oh no, her name tag fell off a week or so ago but we are about to move house so we let if, yes officer we know it would have been helpful. She has a purple collar with daisies on it though. Oh you have Sally! That's great! Oh you don't have her any more? At Haxby boarding kennels, right. Please can you give me the number? Thanks, got it. I'll phone them now, thanks again, good bye'. It was great news, Sally had finally got bored and ran up to kind people who had taken her to a nearby police station. She had spent a couple of hours there and then paperwork had to be done and she'd been taken to a boarding kennels a few miles away in the sticks on a rural farm. It took a little time to reach the place as there were no street lights and the sign for the kennels had recently blown down! Never mind the story has a happy end - we found Sally once again. But that's not all... ...To our horror we found that we had phoned the police only 5 minutes before they'd done the paperwork and before Sally had been transported to the kennels therefore there was a cost of 50 British pounds that we needed to pay on the spot for the return of our precious pooch - arghhh! Happy Christmas to you Sally!!!!!

Sally on the Move

What a year, what an event packed year! In the summer Tony got a new job and we uprooted from the beautiful North West and opened a new chapter of our lives in the spectacular city of York. Funny how such a momentous and life changing move can be neatly fitted into one insignificant sentence. To compound matters in November, one day as I was preparing to visit a school where a teaching post had come up that I was going to apply for I suddenly suffered a heart attack. Life changed quite dramatically at that point! We all found it hard to adjust in different ways and Sally has been exception. Thankfully I'm on the mend now but it's been difficult for me to give Sally the attention and exercise that she needs. Never fear, there's a hero living down the road, our new friend and local curate Daniel. Amazingly he offered to look after Sally for us for a whole month. She has had a ball getting to know Daniel and Riley (a very handsome and playful Golden Retriever). I think it's been Daniel's aim to reform our delinquent pooch. She came home Christmas week as if a magic wand had been waved over her head and it lasted ... For a full 3 days but alas Daniel is far away visiting family in America for the holidays and his magic is fading. In truth Sally was no angel on Daniel's watch. I may yet persuade him to contribute a post of his own. He's got a cracker! So as you can probably tell the year has more story's to yield. My next blog is an adventure that happened just this week - Christmas week!