Finding Harmony

by Sally Hyder

  The day was drawing to a close and now I could scarcely breathe: was there a dog suitable for me? Would it be Harmony, as I secretly longed? It would have been entirely wrong to presume a decision had been made but I couldn’t help but feel nervous: I knew we must be nearing a decision even if it was a ‘No’ because we would have to leave at 4pm to drive to the airport and catch the plane.

  Then Ann called us over. She sat down with Mum and me, then announced: ‘We think that Harmony is the dog for you.’

  ‘Harmony?’

  I burst into floods of tears. Afterwards, I hugged all the trainers – I didn’t know how to say thank you. They all smiled and looked knowingly: of course they’d seen it all before. Every month, they make these inspired life-changing decisions. It’s their job and yet they gain so much pleasure from giving people a new lease of life; they are so kind and sensitive. I felt as if I was joining an exclusive club, where all are welcome.

  ‘What specific things do you need her to do?’ Ann wanted to know.

  ‘Can you make sure she’s been to Chichester Cathedral because that’s where I need to go,’ I said, completely off the top of my head. ‘I don’t want her to start howling when the choristers sing!’

  Ann admitted this wasn’t the most typical request but she would do her best to give Harmony an appreciation of church choral music. Then Harmony came out and sat on my lap for a cuddle. She loved having her ears rubbed and her tummy tickled; I kissed the fingerprint spot on her head that I’d already come to know and love while Mum took photos. It was the hardest thing in the world, having to go home without her.

  Once again, I was too tired to sleep on the plane: over-exhausted but also over-excited, like a little kid at Christmas. Mum and I discussed how to manage things with Melissa and decided that the week before I attended the training course, which we hoped would be in April 2009, we should tell her all she needed to know. There was no point in letting her know too early – the timescale would only confuse her and she wouldn’t be able to understand why Harmony wasn’t living with us now, today.

  At Canine Partners I’d explained to Ann that we would need to write what’s called a ‘social story’ for Melissa. This is a story that explains what will happen, a representation of change using pictures and words. Ann sent me up some photos of Harmony. When the time came to tell Melissa, Ali (my very good friend in Wales) did a lovely social story. It was full of simple sentences and pictures of Harmony to help her understand. Later on, Melissa wrote her own story about Harmony, which we stuck to the kitchen door:

  Mum is getting a helper dog. I must not give her things to eat. I can help Mummy groom her.

  It was next to Melissa’s timetable for each week, which enables her to see what she’s doing in big, black letters (very important to her). We stuck pictures of Harmony next to her story so that she could see her and talk about her. Melissa, as you can imagine, was over the moon about having a dog come and live with us. The issue wasn’t that Melissa wouldn’t like the dog, but that she would like her too much. Harmony was coming to live with us as a working dog and she would be a surrogate family pet, not the family pet.

  ‘You mustn’t feed Harmony, OK, Melissa?’ I’d repeat this instruction over and over. Food had to be managed by me, as my way of giving rewards in turn for work. There would be no sneaky Marmite crusts or Jaffa cakes.

  ‘That’s weird,’ was Peter and Clara’s reaction when I told them that they wouldn’t be allowed to cuddle Harmony but they were too busy to pay much attention. By then, Peter was studying for his Highers and Clara was adjusting to life at St Mary’s as a future instrumentalist pupil.

  The weeks raced by. Clara and Peter were excited at the thought of having a dog but the idea was still very abstract for them. It was very real for me, though. Every night, in bed, I’d look at the photos of Harmony and sense myself relaxing: soon enough she would be here with us.

  It was another Everest moment.

  Chapter 13

  The Pound that Changes Lives

  The next three months were marked by feverish anticipation.

  Is Harmony really coming to live with us, Mum? Will she really be able to help?

  Even her name sounded like a promise. Given my faith and the amount of praying by others that had gone on, I felt blessed to have found her. I had Harmony photos as my phone screensaver; she had become a beacon of hope and her arrival felt like a huge adventure. The sense of mounting excitement buoyed us all up – if you’d visited our family back then, you’d have quickly picked up on the mood. Every time I felt blue or if Melissa was screaming and I felt overwhelmed, I would just shut my eyes and imagine Harmony’s big, brown ones gazing at me.

  I’ve always encouraged the family to use humour to deal with my MS – I don’t like platitudes or fake cheeriness. When I fall over, my kids laugh. Or if I’m really nagging them, they’ll poke me with a finger because they know I can fall over! They don’t give me any slack because that’s how I’ve brought them up. Sometimes I’ll give them a knock and say, ‘Sorry, spasm.’

  I can be an embarrassment to my family, I’m not going to pretend otherwise: all kids feel awkward about their parents. Once on our way out of church, I tripped over the flagstones.

  ‘My, that communion wine must be strong!’ observed the resident tramp.

  I told the family that I wanted a T-shirt saying ‘I’M NOT DRUNK, I’VE GOT MS!’ on the front and ‘I’VE GOT MS AND I AM DRUNK!’ on the back.

  In future, whenever I had a sense of humour failure I’d have Harmony to pick up the pieces.

  In February 2009 I received a pack inviting me to the residential training course. I would have to leave the family for two weeks, starting on 11 April. It would be the longest I’d ever been apart from them and I felt selfish to go away for so long. I had no idea how the kids would feel about being deserted by Mum, even though it wasn’t on holiday – in fact, as I would soon find out, it was more like bootcamp for dogs. Once again, I had a long list of commands to learn:

  ‘Up switch!’

  ‘Wait!’/‘Behind!’

  ‘Drop it!’

  ‘My lap!’

  ‘Easy!’

  ‘Paw!’

  ‘Open door!’

  ‘Put it on!’

  ‘Heel!’

  ‘Get it!’

  ‘Elevator!’

  ‘Fix it!’

  ‘Go to!’

  ‘Take it to!’

  ‘Go in!’

  ‘Put it in!’

  ‘Side!’

  ‘Give!’

  After speaking to other partners I learnt that a lot of the dogs respond to the command ‘Kiss!’ It was just too sweet.

  The week before the residential course we went out and bought Harmony a dog bed. I recycled a whole load of the children’s soft toys (including Bunny, who is now the sole survivor) and found the old cot duvet in the attic, which we used to line the bed. I was glad to be able to put it to such good use. We were told not to buy too much apart from the bed: Canine Partners would give us everything we needed straightaway and we could purchase anything else later on. Andrew spent a whole weekend building the toilet area in the garden – it was the most elegant dog loo you’ve ever seen! He put down bark and half-fenced it with spare decking planks. From the kitchen, I’d find myself staring out at it, wondering if it was really true that a dog can be trained to go on command, thus avoiding the need to pick up poo, which obviously I can’t do.

  Melissa thought it was very funny that Harmony would have her own toilet. She soon lost interest in it, though, when her favourite person in the world arrived in the form of Ali, our friend from Swansea, who came up while I was on the training course. Andrew, who was by now working in Glasgow, had organised time off work to join me for the second week. In conjunction with my French au pair Aurélie, they had all bases covered and so I didn’t need to leave lists. Ali and Aurélie knew Melissa’s schedule: I was sure they would be fine.

  We gave Melissa her s
ocial storybook and informed the school (they had a copy too). By this time I was so frazzled that I felt as if I needed one too: What’s going to happen when I get my dog? The departure date arrived and it was time to say goodbye. I found it really, really hard and felt very vulnerable about doing the journey myself. Stop it, Sally, I kept telling myself. You can do it. Get on with it!

  I had to dig deep to find the adventurous soul that I knew was buried deep beneath the rubble. It’s the disability that makes things scary: if you’ve been parked somewhere by airport staff and the flight is delayed but no one tells you, then you think you’ve missed the flight and there’s no way you can go and check.

  The flight to Gatwick was fine and for once, the staff at Edinburgh managed to supply and use the ambulift (a sort of cargo truck which lifted me up to the airplane).

  When we first used it, Peter’s response was, ‘We always knew you were an old bag, Mum!’

  I loved him for that.

  On arrival at Gatwick, however, things proved more difficult than anticipated.

  ‘Sorry Madam, your wheelchair is too heavy for us to lift off the plane and we haven’t brought a manual, so can you walk from the ambulift, across the tarmac to the waiting minibus and up the steps into it?’

  ‘Er … no I can’t.’

  ‘Well, just try! I’ve got you.’

  And so I did my best. Once my knees met the tarmac the crew realised how wrong they were. Even then, it was only when someone accompanying another passenger intervened that they accepted that I needed help. I found myself wondering: Why do they think I use an electric wheelchair if I could manage to do all these things, to make their lives more difficult or just for a laugh?

  When we got to the luggage collection they deserted me altogether: my wheelchair was beside the conveyor belt, my suitcase going round and round all by itself. Somehow I got the suitcase off, got back in my chair and switched it on and off.

  Off we go … Oh no, what’s happened?

  It transpired the baggage handlers had disconnected the wheels from ‘drive’ to ‘manual’. To repeat the process required someone to bend over to reach the lever underneath the chair to switch over. Once again, someone accompanying another disabled passenger came over and I had to make a phone call to Andrew to ask how to do it. (Damn, can’t I even do this by myself?) When I finally got to the Costa Coffee to find the pre-booked taxi driver, I was ready for that large latte with an extra shot.

  Eventually a lovely lady arrived to meet me. There followed a long drive through the Sussex countryside during which I became increasingly nervous. The sense of new beginnings was everywhere: in the fields full of lambs, the flash of yellow daffodils and the knowledge that I was to see Harmony again. At the same time, I worried she wouldn’t recognise me. Would we resume where we’d left off? Was our relationship just as I’d remembered it?

  ‘Hello, Sally.’

  I was met by Wendy, the partnership manager at the Canine Partners centre, and shown my room. I’d brought a new tracksuit plus some other clothes and staved off the homesickness by unpacking. I could hear voices as others arrived; it was a Bank Holiday Monday and the training course started on the Tuesday. That evening, I met the other two partners Caroline and Wendy, so there were three of us in total.

  Caroline, a fantastic girl who had been very badly injured in a road traffic accident, was there with her tremendous parents, Hazel and Trevor. We cried a lot but we laughed a good deal too for Caroline had a great sense of humour. Both Wendy and Caroline had been through the process before and so I was the newbie. Caroline’s first Canine Partner had died and she was now too unwell to manage one by herself so she was to have Giles as a companion dog.

  Companion dogs do all the things that Canine Partners do except to go into cafés and shops. Also, the family can take part in exercising whereas in my partnering, I have to do everything with Harmony. Effectively they are special dogs who can cope with extreme disabilities yet perform all the tasks around the home. Dogs tend to become companion dogs if they have a problem with the partnership tasks. For example, Caroline’s new dog (Giles) was scared of shops. He was incredible in other ways, though. Caroline took a long time to get words out (although when she did, they were always worth waiting for; either words of wisdom or hilariously funny) but Giles would wait patiently, completely focused on her until she got the instruction out. He was a huge, gentle Golden Retriever.

  Wendy, the third participant, was trained in disability benefits so she was a great source of useful information and advice. She was training with her second dog, Yannick. Her first dog (Indie) had had to retire. Usually when a Canine Partner retires, there is an adult in the house so the dog can retire into their care and ownership. It’s a system I liked; I couldn’t imagine giving Harmony to someone else. Wendy, however, is a single mother and so Indie retired to one of her friends. It soon became apparent that this was a huge loss for Wendy; she also had to manage her replacement dog. Yannick had come from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home (sometimes they will give Canine Partners a call if they think they have an extra-special puppy that might be suitable for the programme). Yannick was a mix of goodness knows what: we were all convinced he had Beagle in him; retriever, too. His ears stuck out and were way out of proportion with the rest of his long body, perched on small legs.

  Wendy called him her ‘mix-it’ dog. She had been told that Yannick wasn’t very affectionate but over the fortnight I witnessed how her patience and love transformed him into a dog who loved cuddles from ‘Mum’. The training was the same for all of us although I found being the ‘newbie’ quite intimidating. We met our care assistant, Yvette, who was always there with us; I only had to utter ‘I need …’ and already she was producing whatever I needed. Then there was Shirley, the housekeeper: she’s the pivot in the residential training course. She doesn’t train dogs but she makes sure we’re comfortable and feeds us the most amazing food.

  That first evening together was spent chatting, unpacking and trying not to feel anxious. After tea, I had to get myself into the middle of a field at the back to get a signal on my mobile phone and see how the family were getting on – I was missing them all. I said hi to Ali, who put Melissa on.

  ‘Is Harmony at dog school?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. How was your day?’

  ‘I love you, Mum.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  Afterwards, I went to bed early, exhausted but excited about the following day. The next morning after breakfast, having spent most of the night tossing and turning, I called home again. I was talking to Clara when I saw streams of cars arrive: these were the foster parents (teams of volunteers who care for dogs in advance training over weekends and holidays). They were bringing the dogs back to ‘boarding school’ after the long weekend. At this point, I saw a familiar face peeking out of the back window of one of the cars.

  Was that her?

  Moments later she bounded out of the vehicle and I gave her a huge cuddle. How could I have missed her kissing spot and those kohl-rimmed eyes? I don’t think we were supposed to have spotted each other, but we did and it was great; I was so relieved that we were both deliriously happy to meet again.

  The first day was spent learning about dog psychology: their body language, how to recognise and deal with their fears – canine truths, in other words. We were in the char-ity’s new teaching room. It was big enough for the three of us in our chairs in addition to Yvette and Trevor and Hazel, however add in two or three trainers and the place began to feel like a squeeze.

  We learned all sorts of theories that I couldn’t wait to try out: we discussed why dogs won’t work and why they will, how to make exercise interesting and use body language as a tool for interaction. It was a revelation to discover that I could actually work out what Harmony was feeling by studying her tail and ear positions; also what her fur was doing. At each stage, the trainers tested us: had we listened, had we grasped the fundamental concepts? Each time I reflected back on my previous
pets and realised how totally ignorant I’d been of the dog’s needs and reasons for behaviour. There are different signs that dogs give off – i.e. calming signals to diffuse a situation, such as very slow blinking or yawning and even, I’m going to distract you from what you have asked me to do because I don’t want to do it behaviour. The trainers answered our millions of questions and Wendy or Caroline would also chip in with their experience.

  At some point during the afternoon bags of dog food were delivered to our rooms. We were given feed bowls that are cleverly elevated on plastic towers, a foot or so off the ground, to make it easier for us to fill them (you don’t have to pick them up). We were also provided with a ‘vet’ bed, which the dogs were used to. Actually, we were given two: one for the training room and the other to be used at night in our room. ‘Vet’ beds are good as they are machine washable, light and warm: they allow air to circulate. We were also given bags full of the dogs’ favourite toys, their coats, harnesses, leads and other bits and pieces.

  It was like Christmas all over again.

  Harmony had her favourite ball on a rope given to her by one of the puppy parents that Christmas and a soft toy in the shape of a mole. There was also a squeaky toy which we were instructed not to use: apparently it was a method of getting the dog’s attention, not a toy. Harmony had two coats, tennis balls, treats, a harness and lead too.

  Late that afternoon, at around 4.30pm, Becca and the other trainers brought the dogs out to meet us. They were handed over to us and from then on, they were our responsibility. It was chaos! Twelve paws, twelve wheels and lots of emotion: order was quickly restored when Becca waved us goodbye.

  ‘See you tomorrow!’

  Now we were in charge.

  ‘Never leave them and never go out of the centre,’ Becca called out after us.

  Do you remember the moment when you’re leaving hospital with your tiny newborn baby and you realise, Oh my God, I’m a mum – now what?

  Well, it was one of those moments.