We are delighted we were able to make a donation of £105 to Give a Greyhound a Home (GAGAH) earlier this week with funds raised from the sale of Sharing Our Horizon during the 2021-2022 tax year.
Since we are currently caring for Misty as our Forever Foster on behalf of GAGAH and Misty’s family, it seemed a natural choice.
GAGAH was established in 1999 to raise awareness about ex-racing greyhounds and ex-working lurchers and to rehome as many of these wonderful hounds as possible throughout Scotland.
They are a non-profit organisation, run by a dedicated team of volunteers who give their time and effort for free.
If you are interested in supporting GAGAH directly through donations, fostering, adopting or buying goodies for your hound from their Happy Hound Store, please visit their website where you can find out how to make a positive difference.
A very big thank you to all of you who have bought a copy of Sharing Our Horizon, left a review and helped spread the word.
Warm-hearted thanks also to the Authors’ Licencing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and The Society of Authors (SoA) for launching Author Share, their Re-use Royalty Initiative for Writers where authors receive a royalty share when their books are sold second-hand through World of Books and Bookbarn International.
Every penny helps and more royalties received means more money to help hounds in need.
Sharing Our Horizon is the first book we published featuring poems and photographs from our blog, inspired by the walks with our beloved whippets Eivor and Pearl in the Scottish Highlands.
If the blog or book are new to you please click on the icon below for a peek inside …
Wishing you all a happy Thursday and a peaceful rest of the week,
A warm-hearted thank you to all of you who showed so much kindness and love after the loss of our beloved Eivor and Pearl last month. Your prayers, healing, comments, messages and cards have wrapped us in a warm blanket of comfort, love and light.
We had no intention of fostering or adopting another dog so soon until angels both in heaven and on earth brought Misty into our lives. She was the much-loved only dog of an elderly couple, who have cared for her since she was a pup. The woman passed away six years ago and her widower passed away recently.
Misty is used to a quiet life and needs to be the only pet in the house. Her family are great animal lovers with a house full of pets and a lively toddler.
They contacted rehoming charity Give a Greyhound a Home and asked if they could find a Forever Foster Home for Misty. Misty is on medication for life for one health condition and on a special diet for another. She is receiving supplements for a third condition and a fourth condition is currently not life-threatening, though needs to be monitored.
The family visited us with Misty the day before we were leaving for a short break. In the midst of all our grief, Misty moved between us with love, kindness and grace and we felt the possibilities for healing.
There were tears. Above all, there was love. They left Misty in our care with her food and medication, her beds and blankets and a warm red coat.
Here a new journey begins. We feel grateful and blessed to be able to care for this sweet soul in her twilight years and remain in close contact with her family.
Our walks are shorter and quieter, giving us special times together with all the beauty and magic that nature has to offer.
We will post here on Mondays and Thursdays, and continue to post on our sister blog Tranature on Wednesdays.
Wishing you all a happy Monday and a blessed Summer Solstice/Winter Solstice tomorrow,
First of all we want to say a huge thank you to all our blogging friends, fellow poets, photographers and prompters who make this such a wonderful space to meet and share in these extraordinary times.
We are also grateful to the health service, rescue services and the large number of volunteers who continued to provide support for people and animals in need throughout the year – your work has been amazing.
We’ll reflect on the year season by season, listing the posts you liked the most.
The year began with new travel and meeting restrictions in place and we enjoyed a rare covering of snow. With less traffic, the air quality improved and wildlife moved into town.
all is quiet in winter’s lockdown nature gives and we gratefully receive the deer near our windows
Travel restrictions were gradually lifted throughout Spring and we had more freedom of movement. The season of fresh growth and flowers also brought the unexpected loss of one of our much loved vets in a mountain accident and the sudden loss of a dear friend who died of a condition she did not know she had. Our thoughts and prayers are with their family and friends for whom this is the first Christmas and New Year without them and with all of you who have lost loved ones this year too.
shenandoah a shaman plays the piano past the sorrows, new rivers flow into this world
We were blessed with a long, warm Summer. People travelled from far and wide to spend time in the Highlands and most of us stayed close to home to avoid the crowds. In the season where it barely gets dark the days were long enough to make a few day-trips to quieter places.
waiting or leaving the choices we make when we’re free
The warm temperatures from Summer continued into the first half of Autumn before the weather turned. With fewer tourists, this was the perfect time to roam again.
cinnamon tea – the warmth that fills an autumn evening
We want to say a warm-hearted thank you to the international haiku and tanka journal editors who featured my poems throughout the year.
Special thanks to Mr Hidenori Hiruta of the Akita International Haiku Network, who translated ten haiku poems by me into Japanese for the World Haiku Series 2020.
We were honoured to contribute to three anthologies in 2021:
… and delighted to contribute to two calendars for 2022:
Thank you again for all the love and support throughout the year.
As we wrap up and prepare to sing Auld Lang Syne, we send you our warmest wishes for a healthy and happy 2022.
A generous poet brings us a gift of prompts and words and musings. Raven nest with eyes that see a circle of souls who share their quest to nurture the earth and keep her wild, when Imbolc gives rise to new voices.
Ideas that float can find a voice, the shrine is lined with gifts. In Heritage Week thistles in the wild breathe with butterflies, amused by truths in prickly questions fallen from a paradise Dante could see.
The stepping stones we climb to see eavesdrop on oceans’ voices. They encourage a parallel quest to both receive and share each gift pulled from a hat by the muses and marbled deep waters of the wild.
Autumn glitters in the wild. The scattered leaves we see by the gate are gathered by a muse. The wind whistles through her voice. There appears to be no limit of gifts carving the path of this quest.
A blinding light eggs on our quest and barbed beginnings in rewilding. The saplings of poems are also a gift that follows the moon and sees a healthy world laced with voices as ageless as that of our muse.
Thin ice and forbidding shallows spark the muse. Our pockets are lined with questions on love and nature’s survival. The voice of the wind is a friend in the wild, old pains are soothed by the sea, each cushion of moss is a gift.
On an epitaph for the wild we can see we tried guided by spirit and muses. Their voices remain a sacred gift that shapes our soul circle’s quest.
Catherine Ann Cullen, Poet in Residence at Poetry Ireland, has been hosting a weekly Poetry Prompt on twitter throughout the pandemic and inspired forty three new poems I would otherwise never have written.
As her residency is drawing to a close I have attempted to incorporate all the prompt words I responded to with individual poems in the above Sestina.
Wishing you all a happy Monday and a wonderful new week,
Whippet Wisdom - a Highland Journey 
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