Puppy farms

When I was training to become a life coach one of the things that I was told was that everyone is always being the best that they can be with the resources that they have. This means that if I had walked in their shoes every step of the way I would be in the same position they are.

I understand the principle of this and for the most part I agree. Until last Saturday that was. This was when my daughter and I went to the RSPCA (Burwood East) to choose a rescue dog. Having never visited a centre like this before (because our previous rescue dogs came from the Greyhound adoption program) I found it quite confrontational. All those dogs that need a good home. There were some who were very popular and several people were interested and other dogs who could vertically jump over 3 feet in the air.

My daughter saw the dog she wanted being exercised outside in one of the enclosed areas. We waited for the dog to come back into her little room and then went to visit her. The dog was quite withdrawn and didn't want to make any contact with us and my daughter wanted her even more. The notes on her door showed that she had been rescued but didn't explain the reasons.

Once the forms were filled out the staff member told us about the dog we were interested in. As she told us the dog's history I started to feel more and more angry. In her short three years this dog only knew the inside of a puppy farm. Born in the same one that she had then been made to have at least three litters and maybe as many as six. All she knew was a shed and small run. She had no idea about how to interact with humans, or what it could be like to be stroked and petted. She was scared, subdued and bewildered.

What kind of person believes that running a puppy farm is being the best that they can be? If I had walked in their shoes I would believe the same? What kind of life and upbringing causes a person to think that running a puppy farm is an acceptable way to make money? I'm not sure that I want to know. What I do want to know is how we can stop them from existing.

Our dog is probably one of the lucky ones. The puppy farm was visited by the RSPCA and the dogs were taken from the owners. We happened to visit just after she arrived from another RSPCA centre. She will be our third rescue dog and so we have some experience in helping these dogs settle into family life.

We pick her up on Friday and we have already bought her some new toys, bed and treats as well as the dog food that she is currently used to at the RSPCA. It will take time and it will be worth it.

love
Sarah

Dear Mr Abbott

I have never attended a rally or been a particularly politically minded person. I vote when I have too, which in Australia is all the time because it is the law, whereas in the UK I got to choose if I wanted to vote. I guess like a lot of people there is no party that ticks all the boxes so I choose the party that ticks the boxes that lie closest to my values.

I didn't vote for Mr Abbott for a myriad of reasons and the longer he is in Office the more I feel vindicated for not voting for him.

In 1998 I visited Australia for the first time and instantly fell in love with the place. I knew that I would come and live here one day. At that point I didn't know how or when, just that I would. During my first visit I was treated to a trip to the Daintree. I had never seen anything so amazing or beautiful and I plan to go back one day. I did spend a good amount of my time being terrified of things that might bite me but other than this, it was and still is one of the most outstanding places that I have visited.

Of course our forests and parkland do so much more than provide places for us to enjoy. They support wild life and plant life, some of which is still being discovered. They provide oxygen to our planet and help to keep things stable. It has been stated that there may be cures to diseases still hidden within the many forests of the world, ours included.

And to date these beautiful and resourceful forests and parkland have been safe, preserved under Acts to ensure that they remain this way.

Until now.

Apparently Mr Abbott believes that we have too much forest and parkland and that we need it for development. Could it be, and this is only my opinion, that forests and parkland don't pay taxes or produce any income for the Abbott government? Not like building roads and houses and keeping paper mills in business.

A very wise man, which is just one of the reasons that I love him, told me that you never spend an asset. You get the asset to make money for you and then you can use that money to spend. Our forests and parkland are so much more than 'an asset' in the same way that my lungs are so much more than an asset. Creating short term solutions that destroys our forests and parkland for ever is hardly a smart thing to do. It seems greedy and small minded.

How disappointing that a guardian has turned against his ward.

Sarah

The lady with the lamp

Russia and the Crimea are in the news at the moment and although I knew that Florence Nightingale had nursed in the Crimea it was only when the newspaper thoughtfully produced a map that I found out where it is and why it is of importance to Russia.

Florence Nightingale was named the 'lady with the lamp' by the solders that she nursed during that war. Whilst there have been films made about her life which romanticised this part of her life the films tend to miss out on the more major role that she played both in health and in nursing.

Florence was the first nurse to look for evidence that something worked or didn't work. She didn't always know or understand why one thing worked and another didn't but if the evidence demonstrated that it worked she wrote it all down and took action to implement it. Today we still move immobile patients every two hours to prevent pressure sores.

She also observed surgeons and noted which of their patients developed infections the most often and which did not. It was through her observation that hand washing was initially demonstrated as being a way to prevent the spread of infection. Of course it would take years for it to really be enforced but her nurses were taught how to wash their hands properly and she encouraged the doctors to do the same.

She was also a rather dramatic and emotional person who spent many hours on a chaise long in the family home fretting about the state of the health in hospitals, trying to improve the nursing care of patients in hospitals and setting up a nursing school.

Until Florence came along most nurses were either religious sisters or alcoholic ex-prostitutes working in very poor hospitals and asylums. Young ladies and women from middle and upper class backgrounds did not have any profession, although they did do charitable works. Florence Nightingale turned nursing into a reputable profession and had very strict rules that included nursing students having to go out in groups of 3 or more so that there could be 'no improprietory'.

Today nursing students are taught to use theory and practise based on solid evidence and it is also far more person-centred than it used to be. As late as the 1980s nurses were still using practises that had not been researched and proved successful through thorough testing. Sometimes it worked because of something else we were doing at the same time.

We will never know what Florence would think of today's nurses. I don't think that she would have approved of them wearing trousers, tattoos or body and facial piercings as she was quite a traditionalist about that sort of thing. The book about her life is a biography and not an autobiography so we will probably never know for sure. What we do know is those 6 months in the Crimea were the only nursing that she ever did.

Sarah

Should I replace it?

At the end of last week our electric can opener stopped opening cans. It made a rather pathetic hum with zero action. It has clearly broken. I can't complain. It came into my life over ten years ago when my partner moved in to live with us. He had owned it for many years before that but it didn't get too much use because his ex-wife prefers to use a manual tin opener.

For the past 10 years it has sat in my larder giving intermittent service as required. I prefer it to the manual tin opener and for added measure the magnet top part holds the lid up once the can is opened which seems a very safe and useful feature.

The thing is this. Do I replace it? There are some things that have to be replaced. Last year it was the washing machine, dishwasher and vacuum cleaner. These are things that I don't want to live without. I understand that for years people managed very well without a dishwasher and I didn't have my first one until after child number four was born, but once I had one there was no turning back. These items are used daily and will continue to be replaced when they break. They save hours of manual labour and do a better job that I would do, especially the washing machine and vacuum cleaner. But a tin opener?

Its not as though it does a better job or that it saves time but I do like it. It saves my hands when it is a tough tin and thoughtfully holds the lid in place after the tin is open. A quick search on the Internet reveals that I can replace the tin opener for just $25, and it is the same opener. Maybe there are some hidden upgrades that I am unaware of or could it be that it is a simple device that works so well it didn't need to be upgraded. It is the same make and looks exactly the same as our old one. The same can't be said of my vacuum cleaner or washing machine.

I don't open tins every day of the week and sometimes I may not open a tin for a whole week. But for a mere $25 I can have an electric tin opener in the larder for those occasions when I do need a lid removed from a tin, a tin without a ring pull. Apparently at this particular well know electrical store you pay less when you pay cash. However I seriously doubt that when the cost is only $25 there will be much of a discount.

Sometimes its the little things in life that make a difference and who would of thought that for me one of those little things would be a tin opener?

love
Sarah

Overwhelmed

The other day a colleague and very dear friend of mine meet up for a meeting. As we both sat there studying our notes for the meeting I looked up and told her that I was heading towards being overwhelmed. She looked almost relieved and stated that she was heading in that direction herself.

We both run our own business and had recently joined forces to create a new business together, and had also become the leader and operations assistant for a network group that has just started up in Melbourne. She had also jumped out of a plane. Yes, that friend! We both realised that we were juggling more projects without any new time management and it was starting to tell.

We evaluated our situations and various projects and worked out together how we would improve our time management. This meant that I would stop calling her nearly every day about the latest aspect of our joint business and/or the network group and we arranged set days and time for each. We also worked out improved time management for our own projects and businesses.

Years ago women used to have set days for each household task. Monday was often washing day and the entire week's laundry would be one on the one day. The big copper boiler would be heated with white cottons going in first and by the time the water was cooled it would be the delicates. That said I'm not sure just how clean the water would have been by the time the jumpers went in but soap and water usually do the trick. We had a machine with an agitator in the middle that my mother had to fill and empty. I remember her lifting the lid and giving the nappies a serious mix up with a large wooden spoon before closing the lid again.  A different day was set aside for cleaning and even as a small child I remember Fridays being cake making day as my mother made cakes and pastries for the weekend. In those days you could like the spoon without the risk of getting sick.

I also remember when we got our first automatic washing machine. I used to sit and watch the washing go round and round. To us it was amazing and my mother loved this new time saving device.

But here's the problem. It seems to me that the more time saving devices we have the less time we have. How can that possibly be? I can only assume that we under estimate just how much time is saved and attempt to fit in more tasks that are reasonable. Whilst delegating can reduce some of the time it takes to get all the housework done and run a business or two, I am still attempting to fit in more than I have time for without going into overwhelm.

Time to pause, breath and re-evaluate. Then time to plan and test it all out. If I am still heading into overwhelm I will go through the process again until I get my time better managed. This includes scheduling time for me to exercise, relaxing, meditating and have fun.

love
Sarah

Long apron strings

My two eldest children left home several years ago and they do extremely well in the big world fending for themselves. They are both older than I was when I got married and started a family and yet your children are always your children. I am very old and even my mum tells me that your children are always your children.

What does this mean? It means that when one of your daughters calls you from the UK to ask for some medical advice and you know that it could be serious and that they need to see a doctor NOW, you are helpless to do anything to help them because you are on the other side of the world. I could have been in the UK and still been unable to do much to help at the time because it can take quite a few hours to get almost anywhere in the UK, especially across London.

What I have discovered over the years is that apron strings are very long and that I probably hold onto them more than my two eldest children. I love being their mum and I am very attached to them both, and indeed all five of my children. I am delighted that they left home and have made great lives for themselves and I love being in regular touch with them. But it also means that when one of them really needs me I am not always able to be of much help other than some advice and lots of support from the other end of a telephone.

You spend years teaching them how to become independent, responsible adults that contribute to society and their community, and as I once read, someone you wouldn't mind being stuck in a lift with. You spend years encouraging them to be independent, to learn how to deal with situations on their own and to cope with adversity when it comes their way. You also hope that they will cook rather than live off take-away food, wash their clothes, change their bed, clean their abode and brush their teeth. After all that you watch them set off into that big wide world full of opportunities, possibilities and potential danger and hope that they will be happy and fulfilled.

I was once asked what I wanted all my children to be. I replied that I wanted them all to be happy. The question was clarified and I was asked what careers I wanted for them all. Again, I replied that I wanted them to be happy and if this meant that they choose to do a job that required no formal training or tertiary education that was fine so long as it was their choice and not through lack of opportunity.

I still want that for all my children but I also realise that I would like to be able to be there for them when they really need me. Whilst it is up to them to develop lives that offer them plenty of opportunities to be happy and fulfilled I know that I can't be there for them at any given moment. They cope with this much better than I do.

As I said, your children are always your children, and sometimes those apron strings go all the way round the world but they are the strongest strings ever made. And my daughter? She did need medical attention and now she is fine. She coped marvellously all by herself.

love
Sarah

A Nana nap

It is 4pm in the afternoon and I am contemplating going off for a little siesta. When we holidayed in Spain we learnt how to really enjoy the afternoon snooze. Here in Australia and in the UK it is often referred to as 'the Nana nap' and yet when an entire country does it they call it a siesta. Somehow a siesta sounds so much nicer than a Nana nap. It conjures up entirely different images and meanings.

When we think of the Nana nap we conjure up images of more mature ladies snoozing on their beds or in their recliner chairs for a portion of the afternoon. Should I be concerned that at the tender age of 52 I am considering a little nap myself? Clearly I have mismanaged my life and now the afternoon slump is hitting hard.

Our bodies dip in temperature in the afternoon and we often struggle through by trudging on, eating sugary high fat snacks because our brains are telling us that we are low on energy and assume that it must be a lack of sugar, and we struggle to concentrate and work effectively. When you know the science of it all it makes more sense to have an afternoon break. And by break I mean more than a cup of tea and a biscuit. I mean a real break, resting and tuning out either reading, lying there watching the world go by or sleeping.

After a siesta in Spain we would wake up refreshed and ready to enter into the rest of the day with more energy and a lightness that I don't normally experience around this time in the afternoon. When we sleep for 20 minutes we only get into the second stage of sleep and wake up more refreshed than if we had an hour. The alternative is to sleep for several hours and stay up later at night.

So I am off for a little siesta.

love
Sarah