I'm having a strange time at the moment...artists block but at the same time I have a million ideas going round my brain. This usually happens just before I have a major inspirational time and something really good comes from it...here's hoping! My sister wants me to try and make a tattoo for her...I nearly fell over!! She's 55!! But it's a memorial one for her grandson that we lost a while ago now. I have too many ideas and can't seem to pluck the one I want from them. I'll just have to be patient I guess

I wanted to share a dog tale with you, I was thinking about it last night. When I was fifteen I did some volunteer work at the Animal Welfare centre near where I lived. It was mainly dogs and cats at the time. My job was to clean out the dog pens and then take the dogs for a walk and play with them in the exercise yard they had there.
On my first day the guy in charge took me to visit some of the larger dogs after I told him I loved big dogs the most. He showed me a female shepherd that only he could go near as she had been so severely abused. Well she stared at me from the back of the pen and then came slowly up to the gate and started whimpering at me. He was speechless and opened the door so I could go in. She loved me and this so impressed him, he decided that I should work with all the large dogs, even the troublemakers. I was rapt. I loved it and after a few weeks was introduced to Duke. He was absolutely gorgeous, a grey Irish wolfhound blind in his left eye. He was extremely noble, gentle and loving. I fell in love with him straight away. I wanted to adopt him but my stepfather wouldn't let me have a dog...they could sense he was a sleazebag and would bite him!! Anyway the next week I went back and Duke was gone. I was devastated and couldn't bring myself to ask if he'd been adopted or whether his time had run out and he'd been put down. I never went back.
Seventeen years later I was talking to a friend of mine at her house and the subject of dogs came up. I told her about my time at the Animal welfare centre and about Duke. She started looking a bit strange and then said that friends of hers had adopted an Irish wolfhound from there about seventeen years ago. She asked if he was blind in his left eye and I said yes. After all that time I discovered that he had gone to a wonderful home and lived for quite a long time. I was so happy...and of course in hindsight I realized that I should have just had the courage to ask what had happened to him at the time. But I still wouldn't have been able to keep working there...just too heartbreaking when so many of them end up being put down.


This is my gorgeous daughter Please take a visit and give her some love.