A sad day at Pell Wall

I've mentioned on these forums before the I live in a fairly isolated, rural location with visiting birds and an elderly, resident dog.
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Jet, said elderly dog, achieved the remarkable milestone of her 17th birthday at the end of January. Sadly however she passed away in the early hours of Saturday morning having kept us up through the night comforting her through her final hours. For those interested I've put together a little remembrance post with a few photographs and a painting of her on my blog with a bit about her.

Being an independent perfumer is a fairly solitary affair and normally once Angela, my partner, has gone off to work I'm here on my own except for Jet. So today, with the sun shining brightly, it all seems exceptionally empty and I'm reduced to talking to myself instead of to her.

Thanks for the sympathies everyone.

Jet was the fourth Sheltie we've been owned by. It was never our plan to have just one: the first, Heidi, came with me from my parents alone and when she died we bought two puppies from the same litter, with the plan that they would always be company for each-other when we were not around. Pip and Ban were a brilliant couple of girls who loved everyone but sadly Pip died from liver failure when she was only five, so we got Jet really as company for Ban as she missed her sister so much. That worked out pretty well and they had a great time together once we moved to Pell Wall - there were rabbits!

Ban lived to be 14 and when she passed away, there was no question of getting a companion for Jet who clearly preferred to have us to herself. So now that she's gone it's all quiet - after 30 years with Shelties we shall have to find a new pair soon I think.

Thanks for all the kind comments. Everyone has been very supportive and I really appreciate all the understanding remarks here, on my blog, Facebook and Twitter. I must admit I felt like I was being a bit mawkish putting together the blog post but it seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people.

It's the little things that keep catching you out, today it was having lunch (a ready meal out of the carton - I know I'm a heathen and deserve to discover I was eating horse) and going to put the carton on the floor for Jet . . .

Thanks everyone. It's been a trying week, but not all sadness.

We took the decision to investigate Sheltie breeders earlier in the week and found a litter of puppies in Wrexham: two of them chose us and they will be coming to live at Pell Wall tomorrow morning. They were born in a family home, cared for by kind humans. We got to meet their mother, grandmother and dad, who were all lovely animals, well adjusted and obviously well cared for and loved.

We hope to be owned by the twins for many years to come, though they are going to have to go some to better Jet's extraordinary achievement.

I'll post some puppy-pictures on the blog in due course, putting together a more cheerful montage (I was going to put some up here of Jet as a puppy but the size restriction makes it too difficult).

Again, thank you everyone for the thoughtful comments. We have three new owners here now: a five year old Blue Merle called Bridget who sold herself to Angela when we went to collect the puppies - Indie and Jazz - boy and girl respectively.

They are exhausting between them, but of course puppies are always a delight and Bridget is a very beautiful, gentle creature. I've not been getting a great deal of work done since they took over, hence my contributions here have been a bit sparse. For the same reason I've not put together a blog post with pictures, but I have tweeted quite a lot (#puppies, @pellwallperfume) and if you don't use twitter you can see the pictures in the twitter-feed on the About page of my website and on the left hand column of my blog. There are a couple of dozen pictures, and I have loads more taken with my iPhone that I'll tweet at intervals.


Despite the new arrivals I miss Jet very much and I have been giving some thought to a perfume in her memory, so that may happen in time.

No time for anything much besides puppies at the moment, indeed, so it will be a while before I get back to creative projects that don't have a customer.


Thanks, they are great! The Penning Perfumes event went very well - I really enjoyed it - and I've incorporated Sticky Leather Sky into my range (not on the website yet - that's another thing I've got behind with - but it's in the shop & gallery and available by emailing me, but the link will take you to details on my blog including the poem it was inspired by).


Thank you Jen, I found it cathartic to write and collect the pictures together.


Thank you. Eventually there will be a proper blog post with a montage, but meanwhile I'm tweeting pictures (because I can do that while I'm taking them into the garden). If you don't use twitter you can see them on the About page of my site.

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Those who have been following me on Twitter may already know that the dog situation recently became even more complicated: by accident I looked at a refreshed page of the site where we found the breeder of our puppies and was there confronted with a picture of the very first puppy who introduced himself to me when we went to choose two, with a big tag-line saying The Last Puppy. He's the smallest of the second of two litters of puppies and he'd made himself known by sitting back and looking up at me while all the others were leaping over each-other at the front of the pen . . .

You can see where this story is going can't you? I couldn't bear the thought of him all alone and so, after a short discussion, we invited him to come and live with his brother and sister. He arrived late on Friday night and I'm pleased to say Bridget, Jazz and Indie all gave him an enthusiastic welcome. We've spent the weekend wondering what on earth we've let ourselves in for and trying to sort out the right name for him: in the end we settled on Jungle, which seems to fit him.

So we have gone, in the space of a month, from one sedate and elderly lady to none, to three and now to four manic young Shelties!

Guilty as charged.

They've been creating mayhem today: having got us up at ten to five this morning they were pretty good with the early walks but on their mid-morning outing two of them, Indie and Jazz found a way out of the garden (through a rabbit burrow) and had me climbing through hedges & over fences to get them back, only to disappear out again through a different hole moments after I'd rescued them.

By the time I'd sorted all that out I was feeling quite ragged and brought them inside where they all helpfully pooed in the hall - as fast as I flushed one lot another was at it - I'm sure they thought it was great fun.

Anyway the sun shone so I let them back out (after I'd blocked up all the rabbit holes I could discover) and they had a good time playing for ages but I though it was time I got them back in so I could do some work and while I carried in the two boys, Jazz jumped into the pond . . . which of course is still freezing. So I rescued her and got her back in for a hot bath.

I got some stuff done for a couple of hours, fed Bridget, the adult dog, while the puppies were all asleep and then let them out to say hello to my gardener, who had arrived to do some work: lots of wags and leaping about followed until in due course Jungle (the smaller of the two boys) also managed to fall in the pond, so another bath was called for. Meanwhile Indie and Jazz went off in search of the gardener and found him standing in the gateway - naturally they ran straight past him into the front garden - we caught one each and bundled them back inside where they are now sleeping off their adventures.

Happily no wags were lost in the making of this comedy.

Indie, the larger of the pups, is still fascinated by the pond and managed to get his nose down to the water and slipped - only the end of his nose went in - he leapt out backwards and spent the next 15 minutes dancing about and shaking his head: pond weed in the nose I think.

The whole troupe were off to the vet this morning for check-ups, vaccinations and chipping: all things considered they were pretty well behaved, but containing three puppies and one nervous dog was a challenge. The vaccinations are out of step so they have to go back next week and the week after to complete them all: endless fun for all the family.

Meanwhile much rolling in poo meant the two smaller pups had to be showered today: they seem much happier with showers than baths so that's the practice now unless emergency warming is required.

OK so here are a couple of pictures:

First here are the puppies this morning celebrating their return from the vet and being re-united with Bridget by bounding about in the sunshine.

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and here you can see the new owners attending a Pell Wall Shareholders Meeting and finding it all a bit tedious.

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The vet visit is because two of them developed a very nasty dose of diarrhoea over the weekend, probably from all the rubbish they stick their puppy-noses into in the garden. The plus-point from which is they are doing a lot more sleeping than normally, the minus point hardly needs further elaboration but for comedy value you might visualise me wandering about after them in the garden as they strain, collecting positively identified poo samples for analysis by the vet . . .

There is a short video of them all playing in the snow, very early on Saturday morning on my Facebook Page too.