The Borzoi

by LEE CONNOR

As an English man I’m allowed to say the English can be a pretty peculiar bunch! I grew up in a working class area of North London in the 1980s and one of the most coveted things for the working man to own back then was a holiday home by the sea. Now the description ‘holiday
home’ conjures up images of rose-clad cottages…but this would be stretching it a bit. The ‘holiday homes’ I’m talking about were simple, basic, metal box-like structures that families would leave the comforts of their very well-equipped, modern ‘real’ homes to spend a wet weekend sitting inside!

England has scores of these parks, similar to Trailer Parks in the US, but here the holiday homes (that are mainly used at weekends and for holidays) sit amongst manicured lawns and tended gardens and are usually found by the sea. My father came home from work one day and announced that he had bought one of these ‘homes’ from a friend at work, it was situated in Maldon (a town whose only real claim to fame was the manufacturing of salt), on the Essex coastline, and it sat on the banks of a windswept, mud-filled estuary. The news was greeted with a mixture of horror and despair from the rest of the family. There really was precious little for a fourteen-year-old boy to do there. Thankfully, the place was something of a Mecca for pedigree dog owners and our neighbour on one side owned an exuberant Irish Water Spaniel and on the other side, the old woman owned a beautiful gold and white Borzoi. Both were tethered on the lawns outside the holiday homes and the poor dogs looked as bored as I felt.

I quickly came to the conclusion that we could all help each other out and offered their owners my services as a dog walker, an offer that was eagerly taken up. The difference between the two breeds were startling. The Irish Water Spaniel was into everything, pulled on the leash and was incredibly bouncy which was in complete contrast the Borzoi who (although admittedly an older dog) was far more sedate in her actions, fittingly regal in fact and as she floated along she seemed to give everyone and everything she met a haughty look that almost verged on disdain. I was instantly hooked!

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Posted by Alex on May 24 2017. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.