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We Escaped to the Country and it Rained Cats & Dogs - and Donkeys

by Barbara Fleming

151 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #04-2358; ISBN 1-4120-4550-9; US$27.50, C$32.00, EUR23.00, £16.00

The true story of a family who exchanged their urban existence for a glorious life of green fields and freedom, and a home for all animals.

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About the Book      About the Author      Excerpts      Catalogue Information

About the Book

This is a fascinating and joyous book of escape! An escape from the chains of urban existence into the heart of our English countryside in rural Sussex. It is the true story of a young family suddenly landing into a wonderful new life under 'a wide sky', landing in fields and woodland, bird - song and the night-cry of owls, foxes and nightingales! They opened their home, and their hearts, to rescuing animals of all descriptions, and then found themselves becoming a holiday boarding-school for dogs, cats, donkeys and horses- and even a mouse or two! Dogs and more dogs clamoured for their place in their 'holiday home', and were bedded-down in the big farmhouse kitchen over-night, and given the exciting run of the surrounding fields in the day-time, with the friendly donkeys and horses. The book is in readable print and full of delightful pictures of the animals and the countryside. There are also nine pages of coloured illustrations. It is a book that, once opened, is hard to put down as you are led from one exciting or heart * warming incident to another. To the reader who yearns to own animals, or help in looking after them, there is much wise and detailed information on the different breeds of dog in particular, and their several needs and behaviour. A book for the family, a read for all ages, for country lovers and for animal lovers. A book not to be missed

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About the Author

Barbara Fleming is an acclaimed author of the local history of Lewes in Sussex, and of four uplifting religious books and now this light hearted, family book of the last forty years. She still lives, in Sussex, surrounded by her dogs and horses and - as she says herself - in a countryside of 'castles, cottages and kindness'.

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Excerpts

Elizabeth is like me. She likes her livestock sharing her hearth and home. She goes even further than me, she likes them sharing her bed as well! It always gave me quite a turn to find her head on the first pillow and Jemima's head on the next when I called her each morning!

She certainly aided and abetted the donkey adopting enthusiastically enough, even mucked out the stable daily for the first month or two.. but there the matter rested comfortably.

We did not appreciate our luck!

We were sitting back, resting on our undeserved laurels: a snug home in the country, twelve dogs in our very successful kitchen kennels, two cats (in the airing-cupboard) and a donkey or two in the paddock, not to mention three nice daughters who had so far safely by-passed smoking, drug dens, atheism and, indeed it seemed, all the perils of adolescent life. We never even thought of a Pony-peril.

The hopeful whisper of small Jenny bounced off our over-confidence almost unnoticed.

"A pony? Heavens no! They must cost the earth!"

"Well, I'll start saving anyway."

That sounded a pretty safe occupation. You couldn't get too wealthy on the equivalent of fifteen pence a week. I felt so safe, I could even afford to be generous.

"I tell you what, how about having a ride down at the Hope in the Valley stables when there is a pound over from the dogs one Saturday?"

"How right those sensible articles on 'Don't buy a pony for your daughter, Mrs. Worthington,' were. A few shillings invested in hiring someone else's were worth their weight in gold".

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Catalogue Information

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