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 The dog was quite withdrawn and didn't want to make any contact with us and my daughter wanted her even more.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