Hi,

Wow its gone cold…and its about to go colder. The jet stream is dropping down over Britain and allowing colder air to stream in so there is even a possibility of a bit of snow over the next few weeks. I know it won’t cheer you up but it will cheer my sausage dog Dilys up. Dilys loves the snow. For something with such short legs and such a ridiculous shape body, she really loves the snow…you would think that she wouldn’t. She creates snow-paths and slides on her tummy down our garden and plays catch-the-snowflake, leaping about our garden with far less dignity than a 10 year old sausage dog should.

So, those of you who haven’t met Dilys yet, here’s her story…

I used to work at a horse yard, years ago and on my way to work one morning I had a phone call from a friend. The friend knew my parents used to have sausage dogs and had heard of one that had been born with a deformity and the breeder wanted to have it put down. It was born with only 3 legs and the breeder didn’t want anyone to know about it, so either it needed rehoming quickly and quietly or she was going to have it put down. My parents at the time had recently retired and didn’t have a dog…so I phoned them. “No, no, couldn’t possibly have a dog” they said and we hung up. I sat there and counted 3…2…1…the phone rang again, “we would love to have it!”. So I left a message for my friend and went off to work.

The place I worked had absolutely no signal at all, so when I finished work and drove away I had a message from my friend saying they had found a home for the puppy. I phoned my parents and asked them how much trouble they thought 1 extra leg on a sausage dog would cause. “What do you mean?” “Well, if you were so excited about the thought of a 3 legged dog, why don’t you think about getting a 4 legged one?”

My Dad started searching the internet and found one not too far away. They went off and met the litter, they were just 3 days old when they saw them, and chose one of them.

I was in the middle of moving house at the time, that stage where there is absolute chaos, boxes everywhere, but nothing really packed up. I started dreaming about boxes when I tried to sleep…then I started having nightmares about boxes when I tried to sleep. I was complaining about it to my mum on a phone call so she suggested I have a day off and have a day out with mum and dad, to get away from it for a bit. We were going to go to the beach, but first we were going to pop in to see their puppy.

It was a really bad idea…I am sure you can guess! We popped in, met their puppy, I fell in love with a puppy and, back when farm-bred puppies were a sensible price and not post-Covid prices, they bought me one as my house warming present. I had to go back to my family, and my husband, and admit that I now had a puppy….and that was Dilys. The picture above is Maisie, my Mum and Dad’s dog (she’s the hairy one) and Dilys, my dog (she’s the smooth-haired one). They are wire x smooth haired dachshunds and even though they are litter-sisters no-one ever believes us because they look so different.

This week has been really busy. My middle daughter has been busy doing her assignment. She’s one of those people who is really good at stuff but can’t remember she is, so the minute she gets an assignment question she becomes completely sure that she can’t understand it, that she’s never known anything about this subject, that she hasn’t ever even seen a pen and doesn’t know how to use one. We’ve had lots of phone calls with her where we have tried to stop her dropping out of uni, packing in life as she knows it and becoming a hermit. She’s nearly finished the assignment, it sounds really good, but she’s still not convinced.

My oldest daughter is back from the hospice. I think she’s had a good time. They have re-looked at her situation and I think they are going to refer her to a big specialist hospital in London. She always looks a bit better when she comes back from a stay and so we are hoping to manage to take her to see the Christmas lights and to a Christmas market this week. Like me, she loves Christmas and there is a Christmas decoration shop there that she and I haven’t been to….I can see a lot of wishful thinking going on when we get there.

If anyone is going to get struck off my Christmas list its going to be my son. This week he has managed to run out of fuel in his tractor TWICE!! I’m not even going to start saying the words I might have said, but they might have suggested that he needs to use his brain a bit more.

To be fair to him, he has been busy this week helping an old farmer out who had Covid really badly and he has been getting our yard sorted out for the winter. In the next couple of days he is helping a local farmer dip his sheep…this is where you put them into a pit of water that has anti-parasite and anti-fungicidal treatment in it so the sheep don’t get ill.

He’s also off my Christmas list because like most teenage boys he’s been hoarding washing in his bedroom. Unlike most teenage boys he is also a farmer, so the washing doesn’t just need a quick wash to get his clothes clean again, his clothes stink! I’ve always had a rule with my children that I don’t intrude on their privacy. So I don’t come into their rooms and interfere, but it also means that they are responsible for their rooms…if they want to live in complete havoc that’s up to them. However, if I can smell their bedroom from the bottom of the stairs…that’s when I get involved and they have to sort their rooms out. It had got to smell crazy bad from my son’s room so he was sent to investigate…..oh my!! The amount of washing that came downstairs was so bad.

The whole of that big blue box is full of his washing, so as Mali was washed earlier today, this time I am going to finish this letter so I can go and sort the next loads of washing out!

Blessings,

Elizabeth