I remember a time, way back when I was at Klemzig Primary School, I strongly felt I wanted to do something with dogs, when I grew up. Whether that something was a vet assistant, or something else, I didn’t know, but I just knew it would be something with dogs.
This must have been my middle Primary years, back before our family actually got a dog as our pet. This pet was a dog, yes, but by the time Snoopy came into our family, I had moved on to other things as my top priority, boys mostly, the same as many teenage girls. Life moved on, I moved from being a student to becoming a worker. Was my work involved with dogs or other animals? No, not at all.
My mother had convinced me to try out for the Public Service Clerical Assistant test, and I got lucky, with the offer of two different jobs, wow, from student to actually earning money, doing what? I didn’t know what it would be at the time, and didn’t really care, I would be earning money, money, money! So I chose a job in the Australian Taxation Office and began my working life working in an office, with not a dog in sight, except perhaps for the old dogs who inhabited their dens/offices and snooped around the taxation affairs of the Australian taxpayers.
It was while I was working at the Taxation Office that I met the man who brought dogs into my life. Graham, my now husband of almost thirty years, my one time dog breeding partner in Holkschter Kennels had a dog when I first met him and the number has almost never gone below at least one since meeting him.
So through knowing Graham, and going on the show and then breed first Standard Schnauzers and then Pharaoh Hounds, dogs finally became an important, if not terribly profitable part of my life. I love our crazy/fun/lovely pack of dogs though, and my life is made better by having them there as members of our family!
So I suppose I’m grown up now, and I’m certainly doing things with dogs, just not what I thought it would be. Life is still great though, and I don’t think I’d like to be a veterinary nurse, I know too much now about what they have to do …
Mick, Jane and Me 