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Friends for Life
Jan Fennell
Full of anecdotal case-histories and told in her own unique voice, we see how Jan Fennell’s unique gifts have won her the admiration of dog lovers worldwide. Jan Fennell's unique gift has won her an international following. Her books, The Dog Listener and The Practical Dog Listener were instant best-sellers, and she became a house-hold name through her international success. In Friends For Life, Jan tells the story of the personal journey that led her to success – and the crucial part her canine companions played in her development. Jan reveals her bond with dogs was forged amid the personal sadness of her childhood in London, an often traumatic period when it seemed Jan's beloved pets were her only source of unconditional love. She goes on to describe her experiences as a young mother, struggling to establish herself in an unfamiliar – and sometimes hostile – rural Lincolnshire community. Jan’s story eventually turns into a charming country tale – a self-sufficient idyll, inhabited by colourful characters – both human and canine. But when life deals her a series of blows it is her dogs, once more, who provide Jan with her strength and inspiration, and an unexpected new lease of life. Friends For Life is filled with the charm, gentle humour and unquenchable humanity that so delights Jan’s fans. Its pages are alive with the scores of larger-than-life personalities – from clairvoyant Romany relatives to curmudgeonly farmers, happy-go-lucky circus bosses to saintly animal sanctuary owners – who have shaped Jan's eventful life. Above all, however, it is the story of one woman's struggle against the odds, and the life-long love affair that has been the key to her survival and ultimate triumph.
JAN FENNELL
Friends for Life
Copyright (#ulink_33572435-5e72-5ca7-bee2-6fac0952c00a)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Published in paperback 2004
First published in the UK by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003
Copyright © Jan Fennell 2003
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Source ISBN 9780007153718
Ebook Edition © MAY 2019 ISBN: 9780008363444
Version: 2019-05-17
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Note to Readers (#ulink_d36f6f02-b20d-5145-872b-997873c773b0)
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008363444
Dedication (#ulink_41f5539a-0668-592f-b20b-bbb8b17bfeb9)
To all those who have helped make mewho I am
Contents
Cover (#u0773635c-83f3-5331-aab4-11f3947e431f)
Title Page (#u138ac23e-14e8-5d98-9f3c-ea38cf677ef3)
Copyright (#ulink_b188085e-052d-5f70-85fe-8ca38254a3e7)
Note to Readers (#ulink_f08391b7-363e-50f6-ab02-2fcc9a383dda)
Dedication (#ulink_55494190-80f5-59b7-a7e4-9c1e7f43ac10)
Preface (#ulink_1bd2b7d4-bd1b-5ab7-8c3f-bf1819157c7f)
1 Beautiful Girl (#ulink_da3a4520-aad6-5224-aa52-71b8b8fb10a0)
2 Family Values (#ulink_7276e9a9-522a-5680-b132-c89583468832)
3 A Secret Happiness (#ulink_7234b9b6-9b30-5427-b34e-bedfe383d270)
4 Arrivals (#ulink_6e8cdb2c-99d3-5315-ad60-64788f09f18a)
5 Love Me, Love My Dog (#ulink_3e68f76d-8407-5e0e-b3bb-be64797a4e67)
6 Departures (#ulink_8c9d5950-15b1-5d5d-8933-ab03c714a423)
7 Calls of Duty (#litres_trial_promo)
8 The Edge of Nowhere (#litres_trial_promo)
9 The Good Life (#litres_trial_promo)
10 Soft Touch (#litres_trial_promo)
11 Circle of Friends (#litres_trial_promo)
12 A Carnival of Animals (#litres_trial_promo)
13 A Broken Dream (#litres_trial_promo)
14 Rock Bottom (#litres_trial_promo)
15 The Three Musketeers (#litres_trial_promo)
16 Newshound (#litres_trial_promo)
17 Educating Janice (#litres_trial_promo)
18 Breaking Through (#litres_trial_promo)
19 Parting Company (#litres_trial_promo)
20 Happy Chappies (#litres_trial_promo)
21 ‘Every Dog Deserves a Fireplace’ (#litres_trial_promo)
22 ‘That’s a Turn-Up’ (#litres_trial_promo)
23 Miracle Worker (#litres_trial_promo)
24 The Flying Flags (#litres_trial_promo)
25 Radio Waves (#litres_trial_promo)
26 Doubting Thomases (#litres_trial_promo)
27 ‘A Little Under the Weather’ (#litres_trial_promo)
28 Pets Behaving Badly (#litres_trial_promo)
29 Restoration Work (#litres_trial_promo)
30 ‘It’s Making a Fool of Me’ (#litres_trial_promo)
31 Law and Order (#litres_trial_promo)
32 New Horizons (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Other Books By (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Preface (#ulink_74f6f1cf-9148-5c25-8a53-5df2e302533e)
The past decade has seen my life transformed in constantly surprising ways. Since I began developing my ideas about understanding the inner language of dogs, I have been granted experiences I would never have imagined possible.
It may sound strange, but as I have travelled around both the UK and other parts of the world, the most striking difference has been the interest people have taken in what I have to say. To appreciate how significant that is, you must understand that for much of my early life, the idea that anyone would be interested in anything I had to say was unthinkable to me. So the fact that people wanted not only to listen to my ideas but to go deeper and to know about the experiences that had led to their development took quite some getting used to, I can tell you.
From the outset, I noticed that a handful of questions recurred again and again. When and why did I fall in love with dogs? What made them so special? How did a Londoner like me end up living in rural Lincolnshire? How did I come to look for a better, kinder way of living with our best friends? What gave me the strength and conviction to persevere with those ideas when the world seemed full of people ready to knock them down? It never ceases to surprise me how curious people are to know these things.
As I began to tell the stories that provided the answers to such questions, new, even more unlikely ones arose. Was I going to turn those stories into a book? When was I going to write my memoirs? My response to these was a hearty, genuinely incredulous laugh. I simply dismissed the idea.
It was during the period I was completing my second book, The Practical Dog Listener, when I’d been asked about my early days for what seemed like the thousandth time, that I was forced to think again. I realized that perhaps, after all, I should write something that provided the answers to all these questions.
The result is this memoir, the story of my journey from London to rural Lincolnshire, from girlhood to motherhood, from ignorance to enlightenment – and occasionally, in all three cases, back again.
It has not been an easy undertaking. Subconsciously I know one of the reasons I put off doing this was a fear of awakening the ghosts of the past. On more than one occasion I was taken aback by the power and potency of the memories I revived.
The process of writing this book has confirmed several important things, however. One of them is that – for good or bad – I would not have reached the point I have in my life, without the experiences I have had. Nor would I have got here without the special friendships I have made along the way. There have been friends and family who have played their crucial parts. I have been blessed with two wonderful – at times inspirational – children. I hope I have done them all justice in the pages that follow.
Yet no one has made a greater contribution than the canine companions who have shared my life. I have known and loved so many of them over the years. They have come in all shapes and sizes, in every shade under the sun and from all manner of breeds and backgrounds. There have been short ones, shaggy ones, pedigree ones and some of deeply dubious parentage.
Since as far back as I can remember, dogs have been a constant in my life. From an early age growing up in the London of the 1950s, I was drawn to them like a magnet. Wherever I went a dog would appear. It was as if some irresistible natural force was pulling us together. Family and friends accepted it as a fact of life. Back then no one stopped to analyse why we formed such deep bonds, least of all me.
As a child, all I knew was that while other children felt wary and afraid of dogs, I somehow felt safer in their company. To me they were the most unthreatening creatures in the world, the most affectionate too, certainly more so than most humans. As my life moved on, I found nothing to alter that view.
Now I believe dogs hear voices we don’t hear, possess senses we simply can’t understand. They have an emotional sense so highly tuned it is beyond our understanding. Everyone who has ever lived with a dog knows what I mean. What else can explain the way that, at times when you are low emotionally, your dog always seems to be at your side? Dogs sense vulnerability and weakness. They have a gift for knowing when to provide the uncomplicated, unconditional companionship and love their human friends need.
It wasn’t long after I set off on the voyage of self discovery that was the writing of this book, that I began to understand why, from the very start, dogs had played such a prominent role in my story. Now that journey is complete, I can see why they have remained friends for life.
Jan Fennell
Lincolnshire, January 2003
Chapter 1 (#ulink_e07322d2-ab48-532c-a83e-42d95b5265d4)
Beautiful Girl (#ulink_e07322d2-ab48-532c-a83e-42d95b5265d4)
I was born of a loving relationship. The only problem was that where my mother and father were concerned, they reserved most of that love for each other. I was the only child, the little nuisance who got in the way, the living embodiment of the old saying that ‘two’s company but three’s a crowd’. I often think I spent my childhood as an outsider looking in on their private happiness. I bear no resentment towards my parents. I have tried to understand how hard life was for them, and to a large degree I have succeeded. If I am brutally honest, however, there are still times when I ask myself why they bothered having me.
Until I came along, their story could have come straight off the pages of a slushy romantic novel. My mother, Nona Whitton, met my father, Wally Fennell, in London a year after the end of World War II, in 1946. It was a time of hardships, and the war still cast a long shadow over life in England.
My dad’s war seemed like something out of Spike Milligan’s madcap accounts of life in the Army. Dad always said ‘war was a joke’ and his experiences proved it. During his six years in the Army he was charged with desertion by one regiment when he was already fighting with another one altogether and reported dead when he was still very much alive.
The desertion charge was laid by the Royal Engineers, his second regiment, who called him up in 1941, two years into the war. They charged him when he failed to reply to his call-up papers, then discovered to their embarrassment that he had volunteered to serve with the Gloucesters when the war had first broken out.
Dad was a practical man and his talents suited the Royal Engineers. He was often sent behind enemy lines to prepare the way for the fighting divisions and it was during a mission somewhere in Europe, in 1943, that he was reported missing in action. The telegram that broke the news had a terrible effect on his father, George Fennell, who had already lost three of his six sons in tragic circumstances. The news that another was missing presumed dead was too much to bear. He died of a heart attack days later. My father never really forgave the Army for that; he had not been killed or captured at all and he turned up safe and well just in time to travel back to England for his father’s funeral. What a happy homecoming that was for him.
My dad always believed in what he was fighting for, in serving King and Country. But he also believed war was a series of mishaps. Anybody whose job is to blow things up and then put them back together again doesn’t feel very constructive in a war, he used to say. His philosophy seemed to have been that if you didn’t laugh you’d go mad.
His nickname in the Army was ‘Crash’ because of all the scrapes he got himself into. He was obviously a good soldier, being ‘busted’ as a sergeant, that is to say promoted then demoted again, seven times. His final promotion came in the field and was given by a Canadian officer who saw that my father was the one organizing everything. The officers didn’t know what they were doing, according to my father; it was up to the ordinary enlisted men to sort out the mess the officers made.
The low point of my father’s war came at Arnhem. His unit was moving forward with an escort of tanks into an area just recaptured from the Germans. They had been told the area was free of enemy troops and had been sent ahead to clear the path. No sooner had they set off than the German tanks came over the hill again and my dad was fleeing for cover.
