Third birthday

Daughter Kate on her 3rd birthday. As ALWAYS there had to be an animal with her. She is to this day (December 2017) still the greatest friend any animal would ever want to have - no exceptions. Slugs and snails were welcome to crawl over her and at about this age, she went in to farming them - organically of course - on a big scale.

Here she is with Berkeley the Border Terrier officially in the breed stud book as Berkeley James Harvest. Not a spelling mistake for Barclay. My father and his four sisters all had the name Berkeley as middle names.

My father dropped this tradition with me, so I decided to reintroduce it and the poor dog was the first victim. However with time we all got used to it, so much so that by 1984 and the arrival of a son, we went further and named him after the dog - Jonathan James Berkeley.

Over 30 years later, he still won't accept this as being the truth.

And 30 years later, Kate is surrounded by her own animals and also actively gets involved in matters concerning animal welfare from taking in ex battery farm hens, to aiding the local animal rescue and demonstrating against callous industrial pup breeders and circus animals not used or kept "fit for purpose". I guess not even she gets too worried about the odd flea circus in captivity.

Oddly perhaps as a vegetarian, she feeds all her cats and dogs ONLY raw meat.

I'm very proud of my little girl - having a heart for animals is for me a very big indicator of a human's personality. Of course I accept that some have had experiences that prevent them from close contact, but I would ask every parent to try and get their children to have as much safe contact as possible.