Finding Harmony

The remarkable dog that helped a family through the darkest of times

SALLY HYDER

To Andrew, without whom no mountains would have been climbed and to Peter, Clara and Melissa who have had their own mountains to climb. And of course to Harmony, who has opened doors to independence.

I love you.

Thank you.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter 1 - In the Beginning

Chapter 2 - Surprise on Everest

Chapter 3 - The Axe Falls

Chapter 4 - Bumpy Road

Chapter 5 - Gypsy Life

Chapter 6 - Going Home

Chapter 7 - Black Days

Chapter 8 - Fighting for Melissa

Chapter 9 - Night Falls

Chapter 10 - Hope Dawns

Chapter 11 - Starting a New Adventure

Chapter 12 - Love at Second Sight

Chapter 13 - The Pound that Changes Lives

Chapter 14 - Mayhem and Miracles

Chapter 15 - An Expanding World

Chapter 16 - Double Trouble

Chapter 17 - Venturing Forth

Chapter 18 - By Royal Invitation

Chapter 19 - Tasting Freedom

Chapter 20 - Finishing on a High

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

I’ve fallen in love with Elmo – at least I think I have. I’ve come to meet the new batch of dogs; they’re only 12 months old. It’s one of those bright January days and the barn is flush with sunlight. Here come Caesar and Elmo, old hands looking for new partners, and Headley, a chocolate Labrador who likes to watch me very carefully with his enormous brown eyes. I’m humbled by his trust. Then there are the blondes: Foster, who doesn’t like ‘boarding school’ (as I have dubbed the advance training), still goes home to a foster family at night. Harry and Henry who I can’t tell apart (Harry, I think, has the edge) are full of beans while Harmony is smaller and paler than the rest, with schoolgirl freckles on her face.

Having worked on the simplest tasks such as retrieving dropped items or just walking around without knocking into each other, we’re now practising the supermarket checkout sequence. The idea is for your dog to retrieve cans and boxes from the shelves, put them in your basket and then pass your purse to the checkout person. It’s complicated: already I’ve run over a couple of paws with my wheelchair. There was an outburst of yelps.

‘Sorry!’ I exclaimed, mortified.

‘Don’t worry,’ said the dog trainers, who have the patience of saints.

They check the dogs’ paws, reassuring me. We reach the checkout counter in the corner of the barn – it looks exactly like the real thing.

‘Go through,’ I say, rehearsing the commands. ‘Back, back, back!’

After releasing another foot of lead, I wait for Elmo to go backwards, facing me, past the counter. Hand high, I instruct him to take my purse and he grips it between his teeth.

‘Up table, give it to the lady!’ I tell him.

He puts his front paws on the table and hands it over to Claire, who is playing the checkout girl.

‘Off!’ I say, then again, ‘Up table, get the purse. Bring it here!’

Elmo follows the commands with immense patience but I feel frazzled. This is so complicated: will I ever get it right? Will the trainers think I’m useless and unable to manage a dog?

‘Good dog,’ I tell him. I reach into the treat bag and find a bit of sausage. Elmo gently takes it from me, wagging his tail. In fact, the dogs wag their tails the whole time as if they’re happy to be working. I pat his coat and I’m reminded not to stroke the top of his head. (How would you like it if a stranger patted the top of your head?)

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover how to get a dog to work for you – rewards. As Canine Partners (a disability charity now in its twentieth year that uses specially trained dogs to assist people in their everyday lives) will tell you, there are lots of reasons why dogs won’t work for you: too tired, hungry, hot, bored … But there are two reasons why they want to do so: rewards and fun. My reward bag is full of chopped cheese, sausage, broccoli and carrot (yes, dogs eat vegetables too!). Every time I stick my hand in, I think, yuck! Do I really have to live with a bag of mushy treats attached to me forever?

‘Keep rewarding,’ says Claire, the trainer. ‘Turn off your chair whenever you’re stationary.’

So many things to remember: the last time I was here, I worked with Claire’s dog, Doyle. Doyle is a Standard Poodle Retriever Cross (or ‘Goldiepoo’, as they are sometimes called). He works as a demo dog all the time. Here we go again, I could see him thinking as I dropped my purse on the floor. Yeah, yeah, I know I have to pick it up! He looked at me, big sigh, and then picked it up. I worked with Doyle after teaming up with Guy, a high-spirited Flat Coat. After trying to manage Guy, I felt exhausted – Doyle was a dream in comparison.

At lunch, Claire asks: ‘Do you have a preference?’

‘Elmo and Headley,’ I reply, without hesitation.

‘What about Harmony?’

‘She’s too quiet,’ I insist. ‘Too docile – boring, even: I want a dog with real character.’

In the afternoon we’re sent out to exercise the dogs, one at a time, in a field at the back. They tear across the frozen ground. I wrap my scarf around my neck and throw the ball (supplied by a local tennis club) for Foster. He brings it back and drops it in my lap. Ears cocked, he stares at me. Come on lady, what are you waiting for? I throw the ball again and again and again. All of a sudden, I realise it’s going to be fun as well as useful, having one of these dogs.

‘Do you recognise who this is?’

It’s Becca, the head trainer. She walks towards me with a dog: Harmony. I smile. She takes Foster indoors. Harmony races over, making a sound I later learn to associate with happiness, a mix of a purr and a growl. She places her paws on my lap. Can she really be that pleased to see me? I’m flattered. Vicky, another trainer, lets me get on with it but I feel reassured by the knowledge that she’s still there and ready to step in, if I need her.

I know what I’m expected to do … I throw the ball.

Harmony brings it back.

Then she runs off without the ball and I watch her sniffing the hedgerows and chasing her shadow. I love her curiosity. As I observe her, unnoticed, I feel strangely peaceful. Something in me clicks: I might have been wrong about Harmony. Then she sneezes. Startled by the sound of her own sneeze, she bolts across the field. Her excitement is infectious; I start laughing and can’t stop. I drive the disability scooter as fast as I can all over the field. It goes much faster than the one at home and Harmony tears after me; we weave in and out of each other. I feel the wind on my face and in my hair; I’ve smiled so much my teeth have gone dry.

I’ve remembered what it was to want to be outdoors in the fresh air, trudging through muddy fields, hill walking, climbing mountains and reaching North Everest Base Camp.

Oh, do we have to stop?

Then Harmony decides to let me know she’s there and comes bounding over. I lift her face to reach mine. She nuzzles into my neck and I see the brown streaks behind her ears: it’s as if she’s tried to apply self-tanning lotion and made a mess of it. She’s tried to smooth it on but it’s trickled down her body and legs, and then dried. On her forehead she has a ‘fingerprint’ – a spot just perfect for kissing. Her tail curves backwards and wags furiously; I feel my heart reach out to her. She’s slow to respond to commands, she’s going to need lots of encouragement but there’s something special in there, I think to myself.

I’ve taken to this little soul.

Chapter 1 In the Beginning

As you approach it, Everest gets bigger: you don’t appreciate the scale of it until you leave the last of the Tibetan villages clinging to the mountainside, the prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. Gleaming white against a big blue sky she is majestic – no wonder the Tibetans call her Qomolungma (Goddess Mother of the World).

Our journey to Everest began before we reached Tibet: it started when Andrew, my then boyfriend of six years, decided he wanted to celebrate passing his BSc in Estate Management at Reading University by going on a big trip.

‘Let’s take three months off before I start work,’ he suggested, one night after supper. ‘Let’s do a proper trip. Wouldn’t you love to see China? How about Tibet?’

Andrew and I have been together since he was 18 and I was 20. None of this would have happened without him. He’s a very private person, but it would be unfair to go on without acknowledging this is our story: we’ve always been a team.

We met in Edinburgh in 1979, when I was 17 while I was studying drama. One bleak Sunday morning in January, a year into my course, I heard singing coming from a local neighbourhood church and went in. Raised by, then, agnostic parents, I had no experience of going to church other than attending the local youth club, which was run by the Baptist church in the village in Fife where I grew up. There, the emphasis was on fun, not God. But I’m a very emotional person with a love of choral music: I went in, sat down and by the end of the service, I was elated.

Through the church I met a wonderful group of people who welcomed me into their congregation. The first person I met was Reg, an elderly man who took the time to make sure that I was sitting with people of my own age. Also, there were families who would invite me to join them for Sunday lunch and gave me lifts to and from church.

A few months later, I met Andrew. He was taking part in a playlet: a dialogue between God (a girl in the pulpit) and Man (Andrew at the prayer lectern). My first thought was, I haven’t seen you before. This was quickly followed by: I want to get to know you. When we finally spoke, he came across as a real gentleman. He has a lovely smile and the biggest brown eyes you’ve ever seen; he also has incredibly long eyelashes. Women die for them! He’s dark and handsome with, I found out much later, an Indian great-grandfather. Andrew was mature for his age with an articulacy that meant he could express things in a word, usually yes, whereas I’d use about twenty. I felt able to express myself freely and be understood. It was something I’d been searching for, I realised. He was nonjudgemental and a great listener.

We soon discovered a shared belief in working hard, enjoying life and giving back to society by looking after folk less fortunate than ourselves. After three years at drama school, studying works such as George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man and Shakespeare’s Macbeth; also putting on productions of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding, I decided acting wasn’t for me. I wasn’t enough of a performer to pursue it as a profession and so toyed with the idea of studying drama therapy but needed a psychiatric nurse qualification first. So my thoughts turned to nursing. At drama school I’d learned the art of public speaking and appearing self-confident. So, in November 1983 I joined the RMN course at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh which, at the time was based in a collection of old buildings with turrets and spiral staircases in the heart of the city. I did a placement on a medical ward (oncology) and I loved it. Once there, I made great friends and immediately knew it was for me although I had to work hard to convince the tutors this was a genuine decision, that I really wanted to care for cancer sufferers. I qualified as a general nurse in February 1987.

For Andrew and myself commitment and loyalty to each other and the things we did, our jobs and now of course our family feature high on our list of priorities. We are also very different: to this day, for example, I still don’t know which party Andrew votes for – a long time ago we agreed not to discuss politics. Some things remain a mystery: how can anyone take or leave chocolate, for example? I once found an eight-year-old Mars Bar in his rucksack that had formed part of his emergency rations. Personally, I can’t be within a 100-yard radius of chocolate without having to eat it all. I am impulsive whereas Andrew thinks things through very carefully; I’m noisy and a chatterbox while he is quiet and deep yet we both love books, good food and climbing mountains.

Now, by climbing I’m not talking about ropes and crampons (attachments to outdoor footwear). I briefly joined the Edinburgh University mountaineering club only to discover that I loved abseiling down, but hated going up! No, I’m talking about hill walking. My childhood in Fife instilled a passion for walking. ‘Munro-bagging’, they call it in Scotland: a term used to describe going up the 283 Munro Mountains (Ben Nevis being the most famous) that Mr Munro mapped in the nineteenth century.

As a child of the Sixties, Munro-bagging was a regular weekend pursuit. I rarely watched TV although I’ll never forget being woken up to witness Neil Armstrong take one giant leap for mankind.

‘This is important and you need to remember it,’ insisted Dad, bundling me downstairs.

On Saturdays, my father worked an extra job selling carpets and would come home with sweets, stories of difficult customers and newly hatched sales pitches. Meanwhile, I spent many a happy afternoon in the local farmers’ fields ‘tatty scouring’. All the kids did it: clearing the fields after the tractor had pulled up the potatoes, proudly bringing home bags of spuds for our mums. Sundays, however, were reserved for walking. After breakfast, Mum, Dad and I would set off, with Dad in socks and boots, whatever the weather. ‘No good comes of baring your feet,’ he used to say, me in my Dunlop Green Flash. I have photos of us in hand-crocheted multi-coloured waistcoats and memories of trudging up hills in orange bell-bottoms, with embroidered flowers swinging round my ankles. Real seventies’ flair! Days were filled with the sound of our breath, the crunch of footsteps, rucksacks loaded with Marmite and cottage cheese sandwiches plus flasks of sweet tea. Although I didn’t think about it at the time (I wished then that I had parents who didn’t march up and down hills), it was there that I discovered my love of silence and being alone with your thoughts – it’s all part of the joy and discipline of climbing.

We walked up to the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye and ate our lunch watching the clouds come in. It was snowing on the way down. When I was 16, we walked the Cuillin ridge from Sligachan, up and over to Loch Coruisk. Increasingly reluctantly, I followed Dad to the top. I stopped early, but he came back for me.

‘Come on, Sally. It’s not far to the top. Believe me, it’s worth it!’ he insisted.

As we reached the lip and looked out, it was then that I understood how you earn a view. The challenge of the climb is rewarded by the achievement of reaching the summit, then seeing the landscape open out before you.

Just before Christmas 1986, Andrew surprised me with the news that we were going hiking, abroad.

‘Morocco,’ he announced, after perusing the travel section of the local bookstore over the course of a few weeks. ‘Walking in the Anti Atlas Mountains. What do you think?’

I couldn’t wait.

Feeling that it would be safer to travel to North Africa in a group rather than doing it alone, we booked our trip through an organised group called Explore Worldwide. The next gruelling six months saw me sitting my Final nursing exams and working in the oncology unit again. That December we flew into Marrakech with a bunch of 10 Brits. My first taste of the exotic, it was love at first sight. Entranced, Andrew and I wandered through the souks, a maze of alleyways where you could buy red clay for staining lips, henna and believe it or not, second-hand false teeth! We bartered for a sheepskin and watched pet monkeys swing from men’s shoulders. At night the main square came alive with fire-eaters and snake charmers, tarot-readers and storytellers. We ate spicy butterbean stew from wooden bowls and absorbed the Arabic voices and foreign smells. I made a point of looking at the women (whose faces were hidden in burkas) in the eye. If I smiled and nodded, so did they. Otherwise they formed a silent counterpart to their men.

On Christmas Eve we took the bus through the Tiz ’n’ Test Pass, leaving the mountains behind in a cloud of orange dust. Christmas was spent in the blistering-hot desert town of Taroudant. The hotel’s palm tree had cotton wool stuck to its leaves and we drank beer from bottles decorated with pictures of Father Christmas. Our seven-course lunch on the day itself consisted of spam fritters, potatoes, salad, soup, burnt chicken, processed peas and cake, served separately and in that order, much to our amusement. The next day was spent walking in the mountains. Escape from the heat (we were on the border of the Sahara) into the cool mountain air was a welcome relief. In the distance we could make out an oasis of palms and orange groves; beyond was desert, stretching as far as the eye could see.

For a week, we roamed the mountains and all sorts of crazy adventures befell us. We stayed in lots of different villages, once in an old derelict house with no running water or electricity. We ate by candlelight and I was given a djellaba (a long, loose-fitting robe) that I wore as we listened to the splash of rain by an open fire while the men played homemade musical instruments, mostly drums but some whistle- and flute-like ones too. Of course no other women were present, but I loved sitting and communicating with the villagers, exchanging ideas about children and marriage through signs and gestures (no one spoke English). In the fishing village of Essaouira, Cat Stevens (remember him?) gave the Call to Prayer at 6.30am and we discovered the joy of eating barbecued sweetcorn and fresh sardines. When it was eventually time to go home, Andrew and I were both thinking the same thing: There is so much out there.

A door had opened and we could see what lay ahead: the big wide world.

* * *

The only problem with Scotland in 1987 was unemployment. Although I’d qualified there as a nurse, in the end I had to move down to London to find a job. It wasn’t too much of a sacrifice, though, as Andrew was by then studying Estate Management in Reading. On 14 February, I reported for duty on the general medical ward at Guy’s, a big teaching hospital not far from London Bridge. I moved into a single room on site. It was a hovel – hot and noisy, with the sounds of trains and the pub and all the other resident nurses in their rooms. The kitchen was disgusting, but Andrew bought me a slow cooker, perfect for stews and soups. It’s still in use today.

I hated the smell of London in the summer: the metallic tang on your tongue, dog poo on the pavements and vegetables rotting in the sun, the sludge of the Thames. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long before I was moved to a shared flat, newly built and also on site. At my request I was transferred to the oncology unit, where I was responsible for caring for hundreds of patients in an L-shaped ward; men down one side and women down the other, bone-marrow transplants in the side rooms, chemotherapy everywhere. At weekends, Andrew would come up and we spent happy days together (when I was lucky enough to be off-duty) walking through the city, queuing for stand-by tickets at the Globe and going to West End musicals. We loved the musicals: our favourites then were Starlight Express and Les Misérables but we also enjoyed Cats and later on, The Phantom of the Opera (you might say we were suckers for anything Andrew Lloyd Webber cared to throw our way!). Memories of those productions have stayed with us. Andrew and Clara have also done the West End shows and being musical, sing the songs at the tops of their voices. It’s lovely to think we’ve managed to pass on our appreciation to the next generation.

For those brief, fun-packed months, London felt like our city.

Then I began to feel unwell.

The first acute symptom was a pain in my side. This was in the March, just after I’d arrived in the City and started work at Guy’s. At first, I’d felt lonely but now I also felt scared. The symptoms worsened: I needed pethi-dine to control the pain, breathing was difficult, my chest and abdomen began to ache and I was running a fever. Concerned, the doctors eventually diagnosed Bornholm Disease (named after the islands of Bornholm in Denmark) and caused by a coxsackie – group B common virus – that inflames the intercostal muscles. I was admitted to the hospital I worked in, a very strange experience indeed. Being new in town I knew hardly anyone but the staff that I worked with came to visit me and my new flatmates moved my stuff to the flat.

After a week I was discharged and went to recuperate at Uncle Andrew (my mother’s brother) and Aunty Pat’s home in St Neots, Cambridgeshire. They were extremely kind and pulled me through. I remember watching the Zeebrugge disaster on the television: a car ferry capsized just outside the Belgian port killing hundreds, which added to my sense of mortality. I focused on getting back to work and making a full recovery.

Eventually, I arrived back in time for a hot London summer and the slog of working on the wards but I never seemed to improve, not properly: I felt dizzy and exhausted all the time. In the end, Andrew and I decided that I needed a proper break and so I took unpaid leave. That August, we flew to Vancouver for our next foreign adventure.

Aunty Margaret and Uncle Gary (family on my father’s side) had a beef ranch in Mayerthorpe, Alberta. They lived there with their three daughters (Helen, Jennifer and Sandra) and one son (Richard); one of my cousins and her husband has since taken over the farm. In 1966, Margaret went out to Canada on a government-sponsored scheme designed to attract more radiographers to the country. There, she met my Uncle Gary, whose pioneering family had created a farm out of the wilderness. On finding they were short of labour, we spent two very happy weeks working on the farm: Andrew drove the tractor and grew a beard while I helped to pickle dill from the garden, picked fruit and vegetables and took lunch to the men working in the fields in a pail. I was Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House on the Prairie! Tanned and restored by our outdoor life and with the chirping of crickets and fields of wheat blowing in the wind, we said our goodbyes and hitched our way across the Rockies to Montreal.

We took in the Niagara Falls, ate stacks of diner pancakes dripping with maple syrup (the coffee was undrinkable) and soaked up the sense of space offered by those monumental Canadian landscapes. At this point, we also learned the rules of hitch hiking.

‘Never throw your bags in the boot,’ warned the driver of a truck complete with double bed and fridge who took pity on us and feared for our safety after I climbed into the front seat, leaving Andrew to do the bags. ‘I could have driven off with the bags and left you behind!’

Lesson learned.

Six weeks later, back in London we realised that we had caught the travelling bug. Now the city seemed more claustrophobic than ever but no sooner had we returned to our working and student lives than Andrew was revisiting the travel sections of local bookstores and eagerly planning our next trip.

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