index

I didn't realise quite how long it has been since I updated this site. I found last year's FMD epidemic so depressing that it was difficult to think of anything else - not to mention all the extra paper-work involved at work issueing licences etc. Farming will never be the same again and more and more people will leave the industry.

From a home point of view Star, our 32 year old pony died in June. She had been losing condition for the last 18 months mainly due to problems with her teeth which culminated in an impaction which we were unable to clear. She and her 21 year old son Mariner had never been separated so her death was always going to be pretty traumatic. We were able to leave her long enough for him to get used to the idea that she was not going to get up again before burying her in the field beside where she had died. We sedated Mariner during the latter procedure, partly because he is nervous of large machines. We were all very sad because she had been here for 26 years and I'm still surprised not to see her there in the morning. She had given me so much pleasure over the years - a truly kind mare and always very chatty.

We are now informed by the Government and MAFF that the Foot and Mouth epidemic is under control. But at what price. Two and a half million animals have been slaughtered causing unbelievable disposal problems. Forty percent of those animals were from premises which were not infected, and if it was really necessary to slaughter them in order to create a firebreak, why were they not transported to the nearest abattoir and killed for the food chain? The criminal waste of carefully-reared food animals and the billions of pounds of tax-payers' money wasted in compensation for the farms involved must give the impression to the rest of the world that we are a nation of idiots. I have collected articles from various sources which demonstrate the inept handling of the whole crisis - we do not seem to have learned anything from previous experience. Not one of the recommendations produced following the 1967 outbreak has been tried! Throughout the crisis we have been given the numbers of infected premises, but because of the pre-emptive cull of healthy animals in reality over six and a half thousand farms have lost all their livestock, not to mention all the pet lambs and goats which have been sacrificed to panic-stricken officialdom. Apparently in the early stages of the epidemic the Government was offered a supply of kits, developed in the USA, which could be used to diagnose FMD on-site within three hours. They replied that they were too busy dealing with the crisis to try out anything new - does that make sense? All one can hope for is that when the last case has been dealt with, a public inquiry into the epidemic will be held and those responsible for the numerous errors of judgement will be brought to justice. For the next month everything but the General Election will be ignored by the media. Let us hope that the population shows by their votes the disgust which most of us feel for the handling of the FMD crisis!!

This update should have been a celebration of spring and new life beginning - lambing and calving time in our part of the world - but the advent of the Foot-and-Mouth outbreak has made it a time of horror and despair for a large proportion of our rural population. The spectre of newly born animals being slaughtered along with their elders on premises where the disease is confirmed is enough to break the heart and spirit of any farmer. Just when the agricultural community was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel post BSE, its hopes have been dashed again.

The Government continues to claim that the outbreak is under control, but another thirty cases were confirmed yesterday. Personally I am appalled that in the thirty years since the last outbreak we have not moved forward. Surely our rulers cannot really believe that the same methods of control will work when farming has changed out of all recognition during those years. Another worrying facet is that when the outbreak ends, hopefully in the not too distant future, there is always the possibility that more infected material could start another outbreak - there is no guarantee that we will have another thirty years free of FMD. If this worst of scenarios occurred, the animals which would be left after the present cull would still have no immunity to the disease and the whole unpleasant business of wholesale slaughter would re-commence. Surely it is time that research for a satisfactory vaccine was funded. After all, the affected species are routinely vaccinated against numerous other diseases, so why not FMD. I'm sure the epidemiologists will give us many logical reasons for not doing so but can we afford to have another outbreak like the present one - financially and emotionally it would bring the country to its knees, and make us the laughing stock of the world. Only a very small proportion of the slaughtered animals are actually infected with FMD, so it could be argued that the slaughtering and incinerating of carefully-reared food animals is nothing short of criminal when millions of the world's population are living below the breadline. For more information about Foot-and-Mouth disease go to the Ministry of Agriculture website http://www.maff.gov.uk

Some weeks ago I bought a Ricoh CD Re-writer from Comet, but I had not had time to fit it until last weekend. I had no problem fitting the device into the machine but was puzzled to find that there was no spare power connection available, so on Monday morning I took it into First Byte computers in the High Street and asked if they would complete the job. I collected it later on, put the whole thing together again, and couldn't wait to try it out in the evening. My main purpose in buying the CD-R was to enable me to transfer the documents that I work on at home for the surgery, to the surgery computer; most of them include a fair amount of graphics and will not fit onto a floppy. Lately I've been resorting to e-mailing them, which can be quite costly in telephone calls, so my first endeavour was to create a CD containing the practice brochure which I'm in the process of producing, and one or two other items relevant to the surgery. The Adaptec software which comes packaged with the drive seemed remarkably user-friendly and I was very pleased with the resulting CD. My second venture involved producing a CD with Ian's favourite songs taken from his collection of CDs. The first copy was onto a CD-RW and although I didn't realise it until later, could not be played on his CD player, so I produced a second copy on a CD-R, which works fine and the quality is also quite good. The third CD I produced was clipart copied from my collection for use in the surgery. The software even invites you to produce covers and labels for your masterpieces and certainly makes a quick, simple job of it.

In the middle of October I registered for BT surftime through Demon surftime. The concept is excellent, £5.99 per month and no call charges while on the Internet. However, I have been plagued by frequent disconnections and failures to re-connect. I've spoken to Demon about it and they seem to think that it is a BT problem. Now that Freeserve are cancelling the membership of anyone who stays on-line for too long, I do wonder whether it is BT's way of preventing the problem of line over-use; when I have time I will make some enquiries.

Last December I had a digital camera on sort of approval from Serif - a Mustek 800. I know nothing about digital cameras, but by the time my computer was working again after its two crashes my approval time had expired and I had bought it by default. Unfortunately, I was unable to make it communicate with the computer via the RS232 connection. I lent it to someone and it worked fine on his computer so I knew there was nothing wrong with the camera. As I was unlikely to be using it much during the winter I decided to put it aside for the time being. Last month, when we had our summer, I realised that it would be useful to have it working, so on advice from the local computer shop I fitted a USB card, and it now communicates with the computer very well. I've been learning to use Serif PhotoPlus 6 to edit the pictures, and it's great not having to buy films. Below are three of my recent pictures.

My second recent acquisition is a cordless Hyper Pen tablet. I have always used a tablet rather than a mouse to prevent my shoulders getting too stiff. The Genius tablet I have had for around eighteen months has been really good, but I was persuaded by the Serif salesman to try the Hyper pen and tablet. After using it for a couple of weeks I decided to keep it, the main advantages being that the pen is cordless and the tablet pressure sensitive. It also utilises the second USB connection, so that I will be able to connect my Psion 3c via the RS232 connection.


Hydrangea Bloom	My Workstation	Annie in her summer coat

I'm still trying ways of getting paid a small amount for advertising on my web pages, so I've now joined the following re-seller program:-

I've been experimenting during the last few weeks with banner exchanges. It would be nice to be able to increase the number of visits to the two websites without affecting the layout too much and so far I seem to have achieved that. Some of the links that arrive on my sites are really interesting, and the organisers seem to be very careful not to accept links to sites with unacceptable content. Another idea which arrived by email was 'vstore' so I have set up an on-line store called 'Dogsbody Computing'. At the moment goods can only be shipped within the U.S. but apparently they are working to make it international. Try the link to it and let me know what you think.

Please note: You must have ICQ in order to use the Add me, Message me and Chat me buttons.

This site is powered by the ICQ Banner Exchange Panel © 2000 ICQ Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The use of the ICQ Banner Exchange Panel is subject to the ICQ Tools Notice
and the other ICQ Terms of Service documents.

Yesterday was really exciting. I had the first message left on my message board ; well, I think it was the first message. I must admit I gave up checking after receiving nothing for the first couple of months, and I'm not sure how long messages are left on. I do apologise to anyone who left a message, and did not get a reply from me. The lady who left yesterday's message is named Elaine and she runs Market Watch (please visit her web-site), an organisation devoted to ensuring that horses and ponies sold at markets are properly cared for during the sales and in transit afterwards. She is also involved in HaPenny Rescue. It was lovely to hear from her, she's doing a great job and needs our support. Please click on the links above to visit her web-sites. I have only been to equine markets twice; the first occasion was the Fell Pony Sales at Wigton, in Cumbria in 1975, when I bought Annie, and would have been tempted to buy them all had I been rich. The second occasion was to Beeston shortly after we moved to North Wales. That put me off completely because it was obvious that most of the horses and ponies were being sold for meat.

COUNTRY MIX FEEDS

FRICKER FORMULA QUALITY HORSE FEEDS

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

Since I reconstructed and relaunched the 'Veterinary Nursing Reference Index' at the end of January it seems to have attracted a good deal of interest and feed back. I hope it will provide some real help for members of the profession.

Spend a day on a working farm as the

individual guest of the owner

learn to drive a modern tractor using

a selection of its sophisticated tools

Click here for details

Until early December everything in my October update continued brilliantly, and my computer had no problems. However, over the year I had accumulated a good many trial applications and other programs which I was never likely to use, and I decided to uninstall or delete some of this dross. Unfortunately, in doing so I managed to delete some vital files, and the modem and graphics card became unconfigured, and despite Cillian's instructions over the phone nothing seemed to work and eventually the machine was sent back to Aria. I had bought a Iomega 250 zip drive a week or two earlier but unfortunately the machine wouldn't recognise that either so I was unable to back up my files before dispatching it. At Aria the problems turned out to be greater than expected and all my work was lost. I wasn't too upset because I felt that it would be like having a brand new computer again, and my new work should be of a higher standard. On its return my priority was to produce the Christmas cards ordered from me by one of our clients. I completed this task and she seemed pleased with them. However, two days later I switched off the computer and was unable to power it up again. A bit of a blow because I hadn't yet made our own Christmas cards and it was now the 15th of December. At first it was thought that just a new power supply was needed, but it turned out to be the motherboard that needed replacing. The machine only returned from Aria yesterday, so my first priority is to put my web-sites together again. It is the best part of 2 months since I updated them, so this page is the first of the new millenium.

I have now had my computer for a whole year and how addictive it has been. It has provided me with hours of enjoyment and I have learned an enormous amount. This web-site did not turn out to be the complete disaster I anticipated. I received invaluable help from the technical support team at Demon, my ISP, who must frequently have thought that they were dealing with a complete moron. But I have come through that learning curve and now have experience of uploading via three different FTPs. I have used this web-site for practice, trying to find more attractive layouts for the pages, and using the Serif web-page wizard as well as Frontpage Express. I've made contact with many very helpful and friendly folk during the year, Cillian Judge at Aria, who is a fund of information regarding the hardware, and always seems happy to chat about any problems we are experiencing with the various systems in the practice. Then there was a lady named Susan Jesson-Ward, who e-mailed me from Oman to thank me for including a link to her site, The Arabian Bloodstock Agency, and offered to place a reciprocal link on her site. Mr. and Mrs MacDonald, who have a small computer shop in Prestatyn are always very helpful, despite Mr MacDonald's failing health.

My latest venture has been to launch a 'serious ' website. This will consist of links to sites of specific interest to Veterinary Nurses, and hopefully will be of help to student Nurses studying for their exams. If anyone reading this knows of sites which ought to be included in the 'Veterinary Nursing Reference Index' I'd be very grateful for an e-mail with the URL.

These are the web pages of a General Dogsbody. I don’t think I have any information of great moment to impart to the world at large but I have many interests and hope that if anyone accesses my pages, and finds that they feel in tune with these interests, they will contact me. I have saved for a long time for a PC and I am determined to use it in every way possible.

QUALITY TRAILERS INDIVIDUALLY
DESIGNED AND BUILT. TWENTY-FIVE
YEARS EXPERIENCE.

DALE TRAILERS, NR. WOOLER,
NORTHUMBRIA.

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS

I am now 59 years old. I don’t feel any different from how I felt 30 years ago and I work upwards of 100 hours per week. I consider myself very fortunate that my two careers, teaching and veterinary nursing, have spanned the hobbies which were my main obsessions as a youngster – sport and animals. This good fortune seems to be following me, for my third obsessive interest, which has built up over the last 10 years, since the advent of the microchip is, yes you’ve guessed it, computing. If I had been born twenty years later I think I might have made it my first career choice, but in 1959 when I was completing my `A’ level Maths and Physics, calculators didn’t exist, let alone computers. My first contact with a computer was in 1973, when I was teaching Physical Education at Trinity School in Carlisle. The school purchased a second hand computer from an industrial concern; it took up a whole room and the only person allowed access to it was the head of maths.

Back in 1983, I purchased an Oric microcomputer and spent hours typing in programs, which had to be saved on an audio tape and were all extremely brief. The television acted as a monitor and I was thrilled with my new machine which was one of the first to have colour images. Its memory was a full 16 kB. I played with it for a year or two but technology was moving on so fast that with such a small memory it soon became obsolete. I still have it and marvel at the immense changes which have taken place since then. Following the Oric I had no more opportunities of contact with computers until 1991, when the veterinary practice for which I have worked for the last 19 years, became computerised. I thoroughly enjoyed feeding all the information in during the month preceding its inauguration for keeping clinical records. The installation of computerised records has improved the efficiency of the practice and I would hate to have to return to our old card index filing system. I should mention that our Business Data Systems Vet 3000 program is Unix based.

Two years ago I felt a desperate need for a computer, mainly for the preparation of lecture notes and hand-outs for the student Veterinary Nurses who I taught at Llandrillo College. Unfortunately my finances would not stretch to a PC so I invested in a Psion Series 3c, and a Canon BJ30 printer. I was extremely pleased with the results and have been most impressed with the tiny machine. I carry it with me all the time and find it useful for all kinds of data and memos. It now boasts 36 application icons covering graphics and text. My main problem is that the memory, both internal and external is full and SSDs are pretty expensive. I'm hoping to be able to transfer some files to the PC.

So on to the arrival of my PC – at the moment, my proudest possession, apart from the animals, of course. Earlier in the year I had decided that I would build my own, that being the only way of avoiding paying enormous amounts of interest for a loan. I would be able to buy each component as I saved the money for it, and the final product would be more or less up-to-date. However, in the summer prices of components came down and the various manufacturers were offering increasingly attractive deals. After ringing around I came to the conclusion that the system to go for was the Publisher made by Aria Technology Ltd. in Manchester. I had some unexpected finance from two sources totalling £600.00 and put £150.00 from my savings to it. Aria were most helpful in suggesting the best specification for the money available and including pre-loaded Windows ’98. I had decided not to buy any other software, because for sometime I had been collecting CD’s from computer magazines. I also had a Demon Internet account which I had been using with the Psion, so I knew that I would enjoy downloading evaluation copies of programs and acquiring interesting shareware. In September I finalised my order to Aria and waited for the system to arrive.

I had still never seen a Windows system so I took the opportunity of reading as much as possible about it. I was really excited when the delivery arrived, but then felt very worried when a printer and scanner were among the packages. I had decided that by Christmas I would probably be able to afford a printer, and in fact, my brother had offered a contribution so that I could buy an A3 model. I rang Aria, pretty concerned that having paid by debit card direct from my account they may have taken the cost of the additional items and left my account well overdrawn. Imagine my delight when I was told that Publisher systems included printer and scanner. As my cousin put it in his first e-mail to my new set-up, it seemed as though Christmas 1998 had arrived very early for me.

The goods were unfortunately delivered at 4p.m. just as I was returning to work. As soon as I arrived home at 9p.m. I started unpacking and setting-up the system – I told my brother he would have to wait for his meal – and by midnight it was up and running. By 1a.m. I had been talked through my internet connection by the lady at the Demon helpline, and was all set to explore the system. Since then I have used my new toy for numerous projects, from making our Christmas cards – including the annual epistle to longstanding friends who we never see – to designing posters for the practice and other organisations. It’s a real novelty for someone totally divest of artistic talent to be able to produce presentable artwork. I’ve now had plenty of practice at setting up the systems, because other members of the practice were so impressed with my purchase that we now have three more Publisher systems within the business. I’ve even had plenty of opportunity to take the machine apart because (a) the delivery man was so rough that the floppy-disk drive connection had come loose on one system and (b) when I registered for Barclays PC Banking I discovered that the modem in my own machine was not suitable. I rang Aria and they said they would send me another if I had someone to fit it. Much to the system-builder’s surprise I said I would do it myself; it’s the only way to learn. Later I felt that I had been a bit rash, but surprised myself by taking only half-an-hour to complete the replacement and load the software. The new modem is an enormous improvement on the old one for all my communications work. One of the things which has fascinated me about computer firms is the enthusiasm of their sales- and technical helpline-staff. Almost without exception they seem to be true geeks (I think that’s the word).

My next project is to publish these pages. I’m afraid that they are going to be rather a hotch-potch of my thoughts, interests and reminiscences, interlaced with family photographs going back to the 1920s. I thought I would begin with the present and work back, so the first images are of the Springer Spaniels we have had, the view of the back of our bungalow from the ponies’ field, which adjoins the end of our garden, and a picture of the ponies themselves. We have lived in this bungalow since 1992, when we moved from a large townhouse in the next road. I’ve owned the ponies’ field since we moved to Prestatyn in 1978. We needed a large house then because my mother was alive and various relations lived parts of the year with us, occupying the flats into which the house was divided. From 1990 my brother and I were the only occupants of the house and since he is disabled following a car accident in 1980, we were only using the ground floor. It seemed more sensible to move to a single-storey property adjoining the field. We kept the house and the flats are now occupied by tenants. Hopefully it will provide an income for us when we are older and have paid off the mortgage on the bungalow.


Freckles and June	Bluey	Jason	Meg

1998 was quite a sad year for us, because we lost our last two Springer spaniels. We started in 1978 with two bitch puppies, June and Freckles. June had three litters of puppies from which we kept Meg and Bluey; Freckles had one litter, and we kept her son Jason. Bluey was the progeny of June and Jason and he had been a lovely dog just like his mother. We lost Bluey in September at the age of 14 – I had hoped we would have him a bit longer, but it was not to be, and for one awful week we were dogless for the first time in forty years. I have always taken them with me in the car and it seemed very lonely without them. We now have a flat-coated retriever called Jack on permanent loan. He really belongs to Tim Mainland, my employer, but after being hit by a car in August 1998, and having surgery to repair a damaged hind leg, it was decided that he should come and live with us. He seems to quite like his new life, and he accompanies me to work etc. His damaged leg has recovered very well and he is no longer in pain. His great friend at home is Fatty, a very friendly affectionate Burmese-cross cat, who is now 7 years old. We had his sister and his niece but they were both unfortunately killed within a few months of each other. We decided not to replace them, because the roads are quite dangerous, and losing them in such a violent way is pretty distressing.

The ponies are pretty old. Star will be 30 this year. She is three-quarter Dales, has a lovely temperament, and is definitely top of the pecking order. I bought her in 1976, after giving up teaching and all my athletics and games interests due to family circumstances. I felt that I could ride her out if and when I had time. We were living near Penrith in the Lake District and the quiet country roads and lanes were perfect for riding. I had bought Annie the previous year as a weanling, at the Fell pony sales at Wigton. She had come straight off the fells and was totally wild, but with a few weeks of confinement, feeding, and general attention, she became perfect to handle, and although she only made 12.2hhs., I found her lovely to ride. She is 25 now.. Mariner, the youngster, is 19 and is Star’s son by an Arab stallion. He looks like a part-bred Arab and has beautiful paces but his temperament leaves a good deal to be desired.

For links to my favourite web-sites, click the bold underlined text, or use the table below.

British Veterinary NursingAss.	Psion	Equiweb	SPC Serif	Aria Technology	k9net UK-dogs	More Animals
Llandrillo College, North Wales	Arab Horse Society	Horseweb UK	Volvo Owners Club	Premiervets	Favourite Gadgets	My Message Board
Our Early Years	My 2nd Career-Veterinary Nursing	My Next Project	HorseClub	Horse Search Engine	Dale Trailers	My 1st Career-Teaching
Equiworld	E-Vet	Dogsbody Computing	vetontheweb.com	Father-Pre 2nd World War	Market Watch	Veterinary Nursing Sites

INSTANT SUBMISSIONYour Web Site On DIRECTORIES
FREE	CLICK HERE

	= My own Pages
	= My Favourite Links

My Home Page