One or two days a week Ellie goes to a dogminder. Nikki, who runs her business Absolutely Animals (www.absolutelyanimalspets.co.uk) from just outside Exeter in Devon, is tiny, looks about sixteen (in a good way) and controls her charges without ever raising her voice (at least, as far as I have heard). What’s more, she has managed to get nine of them to sit quietly all at once and have their photograph taken. We can’t even get one to do that. (Ellie is in the front on the left.)
Roselle Angwin in her thought-provoking blog about ‘poetry, holism, the imaginal life, Zen and the natural world. Ish’ (www.roselle-angwin.blogspot.com) talks about the importance of relationships. However much we might long to disappear into wilderness and solitude (big sigh of agreement), it’s through relationships that we learn and change. Relationship may be the biggest challenge of our current age.
Absolutely. And my relationship with Ellie is probably my most challenging relationship at the moment. She is super-intelligent, calculating and determined. In order to stop her creating havoc I have to be so tough with her and toughness does not come naturally to me. As I have said in a previous post, the dogtrainer called her a ‘control freak’. Frog calls her a brat. I call her my karma, my reward for being weak in the past.
Nikki on the other hand always delivers her back at the end of the day saying how good she’s been.
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