Charity salutes super canine courage
Dog Aid Society of Scotland celebrates its 65th anniversary this year with the launch of Scotland’s K9 Bravery Award. Rosemary Gallagher finds out more
Dogs are well known for their bravery, with Scotland having one of the most famous archetypes in the form of Greyfriars Bobby, who valiantly guarded his owner’s grave for 14 years in the 19th Century and is honoured with a statue adjacent to the eponymous cemetery in central Edinburgh.
Now, the Dog Aid Society of Scotland, an independent charity which marks its 65th anniversary this year, is launching a new award to recognise the great things these loyal animals can achieve.
Today, the Edinburghheadquartered dog re-homing charity, which promotes responsible ownership and relies solely on the generosity of donations and legacies, launches Scotland’s K9 Bravery Award. It is open to anyone who owns or knows a dog who has acted in a brave and courageous way.
Clare Dymond of the Dog Aid Society of Scotland says: “Our new award really celebrates dogs being fantastic! As well as marking 65 years of our charity, I see this as a bit of a morale booster for people during this pandemic.
“We’re encouraging people to apply, and it can be for such things as a dog saving someone’s life, an alert dog which has helped prevent their owner from having a diabetic episode. But it doesn’t have to be full-on heroics, it could just be a nice feel-good story of how your dog has responded in a difficult situation.”
Dymond has being going through the archives of the Dog Aid Society of Scotland looking at the work the charity has done since it was established in 1956 by Paul Pease to support the welfare of dogs and offer help and guidance to their owners. Some of the stories she found inspired the creation of Scotland’s K9 Bravery Award.
For instance, in 1957, the charity recognised the courage of Scot, a working border collie who saved his farmer owner’s life when an adult
Ayrshire bull attacked him. Scot held the bull at bay until his owner could crawl under a fence and get safely out of the field.
More recently, in the 1990s, the Society saluted another outstanding example of a clever canine. German shepherd Kai was walking off -lead on Leith Links in Edinburgh with his owner and refused to come when called. When the owner went to investigate, he found Kai beside an elderly gentleman who had collapsed on the ground and had been there for a some time in freezing weather. Happily – and thanks to Kai – the stricken man recovered well.
As well as launching this new bravery award, the Dog Aid Society of Scotland continues to be busy, despite the restrictions of Covid-19.
While it has temporarily suspended its re-homing service, the charity is still providing its Neutering Scheme, started in 1958, its Veterinary Aid Scheme, established in 1996, and offering advice on responsible ownership.
“Our schemes are there to help people who are financially unable to afford to pay their bills, and will hopefully enable them to keep their dogs and look after them well,” explains Dymond. “Although we haven’t re-homed a dog since last March, as the way we work means we would have to go into people’s homes, our schemes have been as busy – if not busier – during the pandemic. We’ve seen people who have been furloughed applying for our dog Neutering Scheme, and our welfare officer is happy to give advice.”
Entries for the Scotland’s K9 Bravery Award close on 1 October, and the winner will receive a trophy at a special ceremony on 25 October, which will be held at a venue to be confirmed and will adhere to whatever official guidelines are in place at that time.
To find out more about the Dog Aid Society of Scotland and to enter its K9 Bravery award, please go online and visit www.dogaidsociety.com
Trevor Peacock actor and songwriter. Born: May 19, 1931 in London. Died: March 8 2021, aged 89
Trevor Peacock achieved lasting fame as the shambolic, stuttering, oddly lascivious parishioner Jim Trott in The Vicar of Dibley, one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, ranking third in a massive BBC poll in 2003-04.
With endless repeats, Peacock’s appeal crossed the generations. He recalled on one occasion being approached on holiday on a beach in Devon by some teenagers who insisted on hearing his catchphrase of “No… no… no… no… no…”, which was generally followed by a belated “Yes”.
So pleased were they with the rendition that one girl insisted that he wait there while she got her mother. Eventually the girl reappeared and urged him to do it again. “No… no… no… no… no…” And the puzzled mother turned to her daughter and asked “What is he? A lunatic?”
But long before The Vicar of Dibley hit British TV screens in 1994 Peacock enjoyed considerable success as a writer of pop songs and rather less success as a would-be pop idol singing them.
One of his most successful songs was Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter. It was originally sung by Tom Courtenay in The Lads, a 1963 television drama about soldiers in Cyprus, in which Peacock was initially involved as an actor.
The song was subsequently covered by Herman’s Hermits and, much to Peacock’s surprise, was a huge international hit, selling over 10 million copies worldwide and knocking Elvis Presley off the No 1 spot in the US.
With the Hermits at the height of their transatlantic popularity, MGM then built an entire film around the song, in which the said Mrs Brown turned out to be a greyhound.
A man of many talents, Peacock might also have become a professional footballer. As a 17-year-old he had a trial for Tottenham Hotspur, his local club. In later years he lived in a village in Somerset and was a passionate fan of Yeovil Town.
He was born Trevor Edward Peacock in London in 1931. His father was a salesman, Baptist lay preacher and church organist, with Peacock at the pump. Peacock loved the theatricality
of the church and simply watching the faces of the congregation. Early years in the church also taught him about music. During the Second World War he put on little street shows and raised money for the Red Cross.
His father would not give him money to go to the cinema, because it was sinful, but he managed to find a way to sneak in through an emergency exit and was enchanted by it.
He went to grammar school, and acted in and wrote school theatre productions. After National Service in the Army, he trained as a teacher before beginning his showbiz career as one half of a comedy act, with Jack Good, who became a television and record producer.
By the late 1950s Peacock and Good were both involved in the music scene and Peacock presented the BBC pop music show Drumbeat. “Me and my mate Jack Good co-discovered these fellows called Cliff Richard and Adam Faith,” he told one interviewer. “And we laboriously taught them how to sing and gyrate.”
Peacock wrote comedy sketches for Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock and songs for Adam Faith, Billy Fury and Joe Brown. Another memorable
song was Bernard Cribbins’ Gossip Calypso, a ditty that might now be judged guilty of sexism, racism and cultural appropriation.
Although Peacock also recorded himself, he lacked the looks of a Cliff or Adam Faith and his career took him in different directions. He wrote several musicals, including collaborating with John Barry on the 1965 West End production Passion Flower Hotel, with a cast that included a young Jane Birkin and Pauline Collins.
Stand-up comedy led in turn to comic acting roles in theatre, including several Shakespeare plays. In 1967 Peacock played Estragon in Waiting for Godot in Manchester, where he was later heavily involved with the Royal Exchange theatre company.
He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s. Many of his Shakespearean appearances were either in comic parts or supporting roles, including that of Horatio in Hamlet at the Edinburgh Festival in 1968 and the gravedigger in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film of Hamlet, which shot largely in Scotland with Mel Gibson in the lead.
However in 1985 Peacock did play the title role in Titus Andronicus, the final instalment
in the BBC’S massive undertaking to film all the Shakespeare plays. He also appeared in several of the earlier films.
He was best-known for The Vicar of Dibley, playing one of the dim-witted locals in a parish that is shocked to discover its new minister is a woman, and a rather smug, self-righteously modern one at that – some might even say insufferable, though the viewing public seemed to like her.
It began at a time when women clergy was still a controversial issue in the Church of England.
Peacock did however have more than 100 credits in a screen career stretching from the late 1950s to 2015 when he appeared in a Vicar of Dibley Comic Relief special. He played Quilp in the BBC adaptation of The Old Curiosity Shop and Father Christmas’s father in the Hollywood movie Fred Claus.
One of his last credits was for the 2012 film Quartet, which was set in a home for retired musicians. Peacockwasdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease the following year.
His first marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife Tilly and four children.