I AM making preparations for an old lady to come and live with me. She plans to spend her retirement years in Scotland, although the damp climate may not agree with her constitution. Her name is Hilda. She is aristocratic by nature, has very complicated dietary requirements, is almost totally deaf, suffers from arthritis and has a tendency to bark excitedly.
Hilda is a 12-year-old thoroughbred Australian sheep dog. She will be travelling by Qantas with her personal assistant (my girlfriend) at a cost of £700. She will have to suffer the indignity of travelling in a heated, air conditioned compound along
side 'pets'.
She will be carried off at Singapore to deal with 'her toilet' and make herself presentable for her arrival, which will be via a rip-off company near Heathrow that will charge a further hundred for her 'collection'. In addition, there is the £300 for her quarantine examination and injections and the holding case (she does not like to call it a cage) which costs a further £200.
I've just started to realise the financial impact of accommodating the little brown madam. Canned dog food causes her flatulence and halitosis, so she eats nothing but raw chicken legs and a carefully prepared canine muesli with special herbs for her arthritis, available only from Chinese herbalists at a cost of 20 quid per weekly bag.
In addition, she has to have quarterly steroid shots at 40 quid. On top of that she requires special shampoos for her recurrent fungal infections, which come from the burden of permanently having to wear a fur coat. Cost: £35, monthly. She also has a penchant for dried pigs' ears which I have yet to source.
Other more conventional dog costs include vitamins, vaccines, flea control, grooming tools, doggy-poo bags and de-worming tablets, then (potentially) dentistry. The word 'kennel' cannot be mentioned as it upsets her, so there is the financial question of 'carers'. The estimated upkeep cost for normal dogs is apparently around £2,100 a year. This is before health insurance, which I will willingly pay for the privilege of her company, even though I shall have to suffer the NHS while Hilda has canine Bupa.
The one thing that causes me anxiety is the manner of her daily carriage to and from the park. As it is difficult to work out exactly how far she can walk before her legs go into seizure, and it is a shame to deprive her of the joys of nature, my girlfriend and I came up with a novel way to transport her – a three-wheel yuppie baby-buggy. While in Australia, this worked well, even though it did rouse some laughter from passers-by. I am deeply concerned, though, that in Scotland the carriage of the little brown madam may provoke comments which will offend her delicate disposition. Also, since her Australian carriage had been (we never told her) found in the street, and in Glasgow I have yet to discover an abandoned baby carriage, this does also raise further issues of cost.
A quick check on the mountain buggy website informs me they cost £350, new. Will she settle for a Maclaren at £75? Will it accommodate her girth?
Questions of costs are trivial. I am very much looking forward to my children stroking her little grey beard, which reminds me of the one my granny once had.
The full article contains 587 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
