Kasidi's puppies

Sunday 1st April

It was always going to be an impossible task to surpass Thursday's entry in terms of drama and then Saturday came and well, easy peezy springs to mind.

It started well with a delightful young couple called Nick and Jenna coming up from Brooklyn to see the puppies. It was a lovely sunny day and as planned, we went for a walk thru the woods with the dogs who I might add were impecably behaved and then we spent time with the puppies. Nick and Jenna left around 1 ish and I set about the feeding and clearing round. At about 2 pm I felt so tired that I decided to lie down on the bed (something I never do) and I did manage to get a little sleep. Iwoke up around 1.45, put the kettle on and looking out of the window I noticed a mist gathering in the valley below. A couple of minutes later the dogs alerted me to a car that had driven up the driveway. A young women with 3 young children beckoned me towards the car, she looked quite disressed and I immediaetly thought that something terrible had happened to her. She aked me If I knew that the field next to my house was on fire and was rapidly approaching my house. I looked at her as if she was speaking in a foriegn language, then It dawned on me that I had seen smoke and not mist. I put the dogs away before they were able to realise what was happening, meanwhile this total stranger had leaped out of her car and started to untangle the hosepipe which was attached to the house and started hosing down near the treeline to hopefully stop the fire from becoming within 10 feet of the house. I ran into the house to dial 911 and asked my daughter and her friend Claire to help outside. It was a pretty scary site, the field adjacent and below our house were very much burned out and towards the bottom of my drive behind a newly constucted fence was a huge dump of rubbish that was ablaze.

My next thought was my dear friend and neighbour Evelyn, an 87 year old lady who is very much house bound and was in direct line of the fire and owner of the fields that were ablaze.I jumped into the car and drove down to her house passing 2 fire engines on my way. I dicovered that she was ok and in fact had relatives visiting that day. It was odd, but because of the wind direction no smoke could be seen from her house. On my return up the hill the firemen tried to prevent me from going back to my house. I sort of flipped my lid and pointed out to them it was my house that had the fire racing up the tree line and I had to get back to my daughter and my animals.

When I dialled 911 the operator had asked that I evacuate the house and I certainly would have done if I thought any of us were in imminent danger but with 10 pups, 5 dogs, and 3 cats I really did not want to do this and as It happened It was not necessary.

In the end we had fire engines from 2 seperate departments and It took about 2 hours for the fires to be put out. It was very exciting and I have tremendous admiration for all of the volunteer firefighters who responded to the call even though I shouted at them when I saw that 2 engines were way down the road hosing water into the field where as the fire spreading through my treeline up to my house was left unchecked and waiting for engines from another department.

Once it was obvious the fire was under control I began to wonder how it could have possibly started. There was still a little snow left in places and we certainly were not experiencing hot weather and I don't think for one minute it was intentional.

We have recently had a problem with 4 wheelers trespassing on Evelyns land and I think they must have thrown a cigarette butt on to the ground and It started from there. Either way, I dread to think what would have happened if we had not intervened when we did and once again the puppies were oblivious to it all.

I promise my next entry will be about the puppies who are as adorable as ever.

Next, I have to start checking the boys for 2 testicles and checking bites on all of them.

I haven't even had time to go out and buy a well deserved bottle of wine so I have taken to drinking the sherry Olivia bought me for christmas which is very nice. I wouldn't want to her to think I am drinking it as a last resort.