Finding Harmony

by Sally Hyder

  It seems I’m not the only one to think of Harmony as a shy schoolgirl.

  ‘All Harmony needs is a boater set at a jaunty angle and she could be a St Trinian’s schoolgirl with those freckles and that cheeky smile!’ declared Liz.

  Harmony is the youngest of the pack and the newest recruit. If the pack gets too big or her beloved Barney plays with someone else, then she will hang back and watch. Mind you, she doesn’t hang back if there’s a stick in sight! She loves chewing sticks but this isn’t good for the dogs as splinters can get stuck into their soft palate or throat. Sticks are something of an obsession with Harmony, though. One day, she was chewing on what must have been a particularly delicious stick and she simply would not let go. In the end I threw it into the middle of a prickly bush and Liz and I moved on with the other dogs. Harmony followed and as far as I was concerned, the stick was forgotten. Oh no, think again! On the return journey, we passed the other side of the bush and off she went into the thick of it to retrieve that stick. This meant Liz had to come to the rescue and disentangle her from a particularly thorny branch, which managed to get caught up in her collar. Eventually, Harmony reappeared, triumphant, clutching the stick in her jaws.

  In the early days, the chief difference between me and the other dog-walkers was that they came armed with plastic bags for picking up poo and I didn’t. Now it’s not quite true: over time, Harmony began to work out when I was going to exercise her and would refuse to use her toilet area. She tilts her head coquettishly, which is as good as shaking it, and does a little shrug.

  No way! I’m not going now with you hovering over me. Besides, why should I go now when there are all those big bushes waiting for me in the park?

  Fortunately, I can now reach over my chair far enough to pick up the poo if necessary and if I can, so too can others. It really annoys me when I see excrement lying on pavements or in the grass – it gives us dog-walkers a bad name. Having said Harmony won’t go, she will if I haven’t exercised her yet and we need to go shopping. Clever girl!

  The only other difference at the park is that the other dogs are free to tear off and behave like dogs. Harmony, in contrast, always has one eye on me; it’s second nature to her. Every few minutes, she’ll come back to check up on me. In return, she still needs my protection and reassurance when the pack becomes too unwieldy and she feels overwhelmed. Mum, look after me, she pleads with her big brown eyes.

  At the end of the summer, Liz and I were just finishing our walk and having our customary moan about the lack of a park café when we heard Anne call for help. We couldn’t quite hear what was wrong but as we turned the corner we spotted her. One of her dogs (Will) had collapsed. He was elderly and Anne had told us that she was worried about him – in fact, he had an appointment with the vet that very afternoon.

  We hoisted him onto my scooter. Anne walked alongside, one hand cupped to keep his head up. Liz had Barney, Harmony and Anne’s other dog Ben on their leads. Together, we made a slow procession to the gate, where her husband was waiting with the car. It turned out to be Will’s last trip to the park for he died that day at the vet’s. The next day, the dog-walking community were ready with cuddles and solace.

  The following week, my scooter developed a puncture halfway through the woods. The wheelchair lurched to the right but not hard enough to throw me out. Luckily, Martin and his wife Lee were there; Martin supported me to the gate while Lee and Cath, another dog-walker, pushed my scooter. I rang Peter and was met by my son and his girlfriend at the park’s gate with the manual wheelchair to get me home – thanks, team!

  Chapter 16

  Double Trouble

  One of the things that I hate about being disabled is that it’s impossible to be spontaneous. You can’t say, let’s go to London this weekend or let’s see a movie tonight and even well-planned travel is not risk-free. Often I’ll ring up a restaurant or hotel to see if it’s possible for me to go there.

  ‘Do you have disability access?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’re disability-friendly,’ they insist.

  But then I get there only to discover there’s a flight of steps to reach the front door and the downstairs bedroom has a floor-level camp bed. Add to the mix Melissa’s needs and you’ll understand why a trip away makes for spontaneous combustion rather than fun. The fact is, we’re not like other families so we can’t just get on and do things in the way they can: I’m in a wheelchair and Melissa is like a toddler; she needs constant supervision. She has to know where each of us is, all the time, and she can’t abide change. If Andrew wants to put up shelves, we have to send her to Granny Edinburgh’s. The sound of a drill and the banging upsets her; she just doesn’t have the analytical skills to understand why she’s distressed.

  Monday to Friday is dominated by routine: school, swimming, tea, bed. Saturday is pancakes with Dad; Sunday is always church. One of Melissa’s favourite places is the Yard Adventure Centre, which has the biggest sand-pit in the world (I’m not joking!). Designed for children with disabilities of every kind and their carers, it has its own stream and a bed that’s a swing, with room for 10 kids to lie inside with pillows. There’s a sensory room, arts and crafts; also a kitchen for the carers to make themselves a cup of tea – it’s about allowing children their independence and enabling them to organise themselves and make decisions about what they want to do. Kids can wander there. When I bring Melissa back from the Yard, she’s a different child: she will draw and play in the garden by herself as opposed to asking me to do it with her.

  Melissa adores the zoo (particularly the monkey house) and she loves public transport: a bus ride to the zoo, followed by tea in a café is the dream ticket. Each year, her grandparents buy her an annual zoo-pass for her birthday. I was worried that Melissa’s world was becoming increasingly small and mentioned this to her granny. She now takes her granddaughter on buses and to the shopping centre, where they go up escalators and visit the cinema. Melissa can’t follow a story but she loves the music. The Princess and the Frog was a bit hit: it’s set in 1920s New Orleans and has fantastic jazz that makes her eyes gleam. It can be a bit awkward because she loves to get up and dance! We have learnt to go to the cinema during off-peak hours and also, to time our arrival so the trailers and adverts are finished. Otherwise Melissa asks, ‘Is it finished?’ when the ads have come to an end but the feature film itself hasn’t actually started.

  In October 2009, we decided to go away for the weekend in the Highlands. We had prepared Melissa, packed everything she needed in order to feel safe and happy, to occupy and prepare her for the change. Her pillows and torch? Tick. Monkey? Tick. Her books, DVD player and DVDs? More ticks. We also packed for Harmony and already we knew her extensive list off by heart: food, whistle, treat bag, bed, towel, two coats (in case one gets dirty), leads, harness, food bowl, toys and Bunny (by now a sort of security blanket). We were to stay in a ground-floor flat with stunning views over a lochside with sand and shale beaches.

  Autumn in Scotland is stunning: thanks to that year’s Indian summer, the leaves had changed colour late in the season and the trees were a collage of russet reds, bitter oranges and sunburst yellows. The loch’s waters reflected the sky; cotton-wool clouds skudded across the brilliant blue as a gentle breeze ruffled the waves. Overhead soared birds of prey. Rabbits ran for cover and in the distance we spied deer, startled by our footsteps.

  The beach isn’t the easiest place to be in a wheelchair, nor in fact was the flat. But what the flat lacked in disability access, it made up for with stunning views. I knew that at some stage over the weekend, I would be left sitting on the beach in my wheelchair, watching the others in the distance. Which was exactly what happened: sometimes you must bow to the majority while partaking as much as you can. Melissa wanted to fish from a little wooden jetty but I was keen to take Harmony and the family for a walk along a forest track. This time, however, I drew the short straw: jetty, it was.

  So there I was, stuck in my wheelchair on the beach, feeling inc
reasingly isolated and frustrated. Not only had I lost my family, but I’d also lost my dog. Everyone else had walked down to the end of the jetty, they were having fun and that made me happy; what worried me was that Harmony had disappeared and it was her first experience of a sandy beach, with all its briny smells. She loves swimming and it was hardly surprising she’d wandered off. I shouted for Andrew.

  ‘I can’t see Harmony!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me. ‘I can see her.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s digging in the sand.’ He paused. ‘It looks like she’s eating something …’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I muttered.

  He went to get her. Harmony played with the family for a while, then disappeared again. When it was time for lunch, we made our way back to the flat. We packed up and left for home with lots of happy memories.

  That night Harmony fell ill: she was groaning and quite clearly in pain. She had eaten rubbish in the park before and been sick. I’d always stuck to the Canine Partners’ rule: starve the dog for 24 hours. If the complaint continues, take her to the vet. Harmony kept stretching, arching her back and making the choking sound that accompanies retching; nothing came out. By this stage there was just bile. She wouldn’t lie down or sit; she was just standing and swaying.

  I spent much of the night up with her, rubbing her tummy and feeling helpless, not knowing what to do.

  Tuesday morning, I took her to the vet. I love our local vet: The Oak Tree Vet Centre. We know all the vets at the practice – they have treated three past rabbits and the current duo, Duchess and Snuffles. They even managed not to snigger when the white rabbit turned out to be female (I had booked both rabbits in for neutering!). They’ve saved rats (Peter’s teenage pets) and even sorted out the ferret when our short-term fostering became long term and I couldn’t stand the stench, so had him neutered. Oh yes, and once the ferret fell and hurt his paw: cue another trip to the vet’s.

  This was worse, much worse than anything I’d experienced before: Harmony was now an extension of me. Would she be OK? It was almost as if I was taking a child to casualty.

  ‘Her stomach is full of something,’ said the vet after a brief examination. ‘I can feel something that feels like pebbles. We’ll need to take an X-ray, which means giving her a general anaesthetic.’

  Terrified, I signed the consent form and asked if I could be with her.

  ‘No, go home and we’ll call you when she is ready for you,’ he told me.

  I went home and rang Canine Partners. Wendy wasn’t available but a kindly voice that picked up the phone triggered a wave of sobs from me.

  ‘It’s Harmony! I’ve had to leave her at the vet’s for a general anaesthetic and X-ray. She’s eaten sand and won’t stop being sick, and I am so scared and feel so guilty!’

  She listened while I sobbed. Then Andy, the chief executive, called me back. I kept apologising but he continued to reassure me that dogs do these things (she’s a dog not an angel, remember?) and told me to keep in touch and let them know when I had more news. My parents were visiting and they waited with me. It was a very long day.

  Finally, there was a call.

  ‘Harmony is awake now if you’d like to come and collect her.’

  I raced round there. Before Harmony was brought out to me, however, I was taken through to the vet for the news.

  ‘The X-ray is showing a considerable quantity of sand. It has moved from her stomach to her bowel,’ he told me and showed me the X-ray.

  I could see what looked like an enormous stuffed sausage, in a stuffed bowel.

  ‘She’s digested approximately three kilos of sand and stone,’ he continued.

  I could even see some stone shapes in the X-rays; it looked painful.

  ‘So, that’s what she was eating,’ I said.

  Later on, we decided that the sand must have been covered in fish guts, which accounted for its particularly delicious flavour (sand alone isn’t that tasty!).

  The vet sent us home with laxatives and instructions to feed Harmony regular small amounts of oats but by the next day, to my consternation, she hadn’t recovered: in fact, she seemed to be getting worse. Now she couldn’t stand up. She was severely dehydrated and refusing to eat or drink so we took her back to the vet’s. Something was really wrong if Harmony was refusing to eat. It transpired that there was no point in doing a stomach wash as the contents were all in her bowel. An enema carries its own risks. The other problem was, as the vet put it: ‘What do you get if you mix sand with water?’ Answer: concrete. Her bowel was severely impacted.

  They kept her in for the day and fed her intravenous fluids (she was sedated again) and planned to give her vast amounts of laxatives. I was really worried about leaving her and tried to explain to the vet nurses that she wouldn’t perform on concrete and needed to be given specific instructions – ‘Better go now!’ – and did they have a toileting area that she would be able to use?

  At the end of another very long day, the vet’s called me to say, ‘You can come now.’ This time, Harmony did look brighter but there had still been no bowel movement. They had managed to get her to eat a little by tempting her with moist food rubbed onto her gums and sent me home with the rest of that tin and two more. ‘Keep up the laxatives, mix in lots of oats with the meat and keep an eye on her,’ were the instructions. I was to bring her back in the morning for another appointment.

  Then I took her home.

  Not only did I feel grief-stricken but I felt guilty at having neglected Harmony: I had allowed her to eat sand. I called Canine Partners to apologise again and report on her status. They were very supportive and understanding (which only made me feel worse).

  To maintain her high-roughage diet, I fed her little bits of the expensive tinned meat with oats, just lots and lots of oats. There was still no action when we revisited the vet. ‘Don’t worry,’ they reassured me. ‘It will happen eventually.’

  Day Five. Hallelujah! Things moved – and kept moving – for days. Being mostly sand, her stools were too crumbly to pick up, but still it was progress. All in all, Harmony was out of commission for 10 days and I missed her dreadfully. It brought into sharp relief how much I needed her: she was physically present, but emotionally absent. She had no energy and was too sore and uncomfortable to jump up onto the bed so my rest times weren’t the same. I kept lying beside her, trying to hug her.

  On day 10, she jumped up on the bed for a cuddle with a sock in her mouth. I burst into tears.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I kept saying. ‘How I’ve missed you!’

  They say dogs can’t tell the time but when, at 5.27pm, she started to pester me for her grub I knew she was better – and capable of reading the hands on the clock.

  That Christmas was very special. As usual, we opened our stockings on the bed and I immediately realised my mistake: Harmony didn’t have one. A few seconds later, I handed over a hastily wrapped biscuit.

  Although Clara was no longer in the choir, she and Andrew had taken part in a radio recording, in which she sang a small solo. Andrew, Clara and Peter sang in our friend Dean’s church, a wonderful, small Episcopal church with the most loving and welcoming congregation. It was Church of the Good Shepherd’s Nine Lessons and Carols. On Christmas Day, Andrew and Clara (wearing a cassock) sang together in the cathedral. Melissa, Harmony and I sat in the congregation. Clara had solos and it was a beautiful experience.

  When it came to communion, Melissa scampered up to the altar rail before I could stop her.

  ‘I want Jesus too!’ she insisted.

  Then she sat down beside her dad and had a big cuddle. Afterwards, I apologised to Dean, the vicar.

  ‘I wish everyone was as keen to take communion,’ was all he said.

  January 2010 and still no sign of a thaw. Snow is fun for kids and snowboarders, but it’s a hazard for old people and wheelchair-users. In fact, the ice was so severe that I couldn’t leave the house. I’d no choice but to relax the rules
on me being solely responsible for exercising Harmony – I was simply unable to take her out. Instead Andrew, Peter and Clara had to put on boots and scarves to take her over to the park.

  Tuesday morning and the sun began to creep out from behind the clouds; the birds that lived in the wood were singing, the animals would be out foraging. It had been three weeks since I’d felt the wind on my cheeks. If it was warm enough for birdsong, it was good enough for me.

  ‘Come on, Harmony,’ I said, getting myself into the electric scooter and yanking my coat off the peg. ‘Let’s go!’

  I found her coat and put it on; as I transferred myself onto the scooter, I slipped but managed to right myself. Following this, I adjusted Harmony’s lead to the right length, did my key-purse-mobile check and left the house. I was apprehensive, but how bad could it be? The pavements had been gritted, the sun was out and at some point you have to leave your anxieties and your house behind. It felt wonderful to be outside, breathing in the cold air. We made our way down the main road and Harmony pressed the light at the crossing.

  ‘Good girl!’ I told her and gave her a bit of Kibble as a reward.

  We crossed the road and entered the park, following the gritted path that led into the woods (this route allowed me to get into the top woods without using too many slopes). The paths had cleared, there was not a drop of snow in sight and we were enjoying ourselves, which in retrospect was what gave me a false sense of security. To give you a brief sketch of the park, I should tell you there’s a slope between the woods that you have to descend in order to reach the grassy park at the bottom. There, I could do some obedience training: Harmony hadn’t done any recall work for weeks and I was keen to get things back to normal. I had missed my fresh air and our work together. If we kept going, it would give us a circular walk.