Dowsing For Dogs

Honestly. I don't know how I ever get time to go to work because when I'm on holiday I'm busy from sunrise to night. Today's been really full. I had to make chilli con carne for at least 16 people. Hugh Wanker-Whittingstall recipe - we used own chillis, (thanks Les) own pig, own onions, thanks to Mr Tesco and Mr Lidl for rest of ingredients. Nobody told me that chopping and de-seeding 8 chillis led to first degree burns of fingers!

I also had to plant bulbs on dog graves. Well - you're in Lidls and see all these cheap narcissi bulbs but where to plant? Then beloved dog dies and that gets you remembering edges of lawn just studded with beloved dog graves and not even own beloved dogs.

It's a damn big lawn. Dogs we know are buried there are in order of interment:-

Polly: sweetest little Jack Russell cross. Given to Pearlie soon after she was widowed. The girls never forgave us for parting. She only lasted a few months before succumbing to the horror movie that is the Dreen Road.

Molly: Springer spaniel just arrived in Nellybert's yard. Unknown to us she was riddled with cancer. We kept her six months. I adored her. We spent a fortune at the vet. Eventually had to have her put down.

Danny: Best. Dog. Ever. Nellybert's first beloved pooch. Committed suicide under the wheels of Bert's van sometime in 2004. He was nearly seventeen.

Penny: She was Pearlie's dog. Died on Christmas Eve aged around fourteeen. Her demise marked the beginning of Pearlie's decline.

Chip: Not our dog but Danny's mother. Eighteen when her owners had her put down. They had nowhere to bury her. We had all the room in the world.

Jock: Not our dog either but the beloved pet of the Wee Mannys.

Rosie: She won't be the last but she was the first to have a dozen or so narcissi planted on her grave.

Trouble is after a while you forget where the pet was planted but that's where dowsing comes in. With the aid of metal dowsing rods we were able to establish exactly where Polly, Molly, Danny and Jock were laid. Whilst about it I checked Harry de Cat and Penny. We're just planting narcissi on our own dogs and Jock for now. Harry's still marked with quarry tiles under the buddleja.

I don't know how it works or why but if you use the metal rods over a grave they cross of their own volition at the exact spot where the animal lies. While checking out our pet's burial spots today the rods crossed in places where we, to our knowledge, had buried no animals but, as Bert reminded me, that big lawn had seen many beloved pets buried long before we came to Springhill.