Hands

Jill and search dog Javelin

Jill has always said she was embarrassed by her hands: they were certainly not slender and feminine, like her sister Anne’s pianist’s hands.  Yet from their robust workmanlike planes such tenderness and healing flowed that few animals failed to respond.  She wrote a poem about her hands, and also some practical hints about hand-grooming horses and dogs, which I put together here.

These hands of mine

These hands of mine

That I so hated all my growing life,

Because of their square bluntness

And the softness of the palms and fingertips

And too much skin across the knuckles

And the way the veins stuck out like an old woman’s

When they were still but children –

These hands of mine

That I so tried to hide behind my back

Or in my pockets or where? where?

That hung like lumps of expressionless meat

Dragging my arms down my sides to awkward branches

And could not be taken off, like shoes, and forgotten;

That I could see pendulum by when I walked with such distaste

That I would rather lift them to my waist

And snatch them full of wild spice and run –

These hands of mine

Are loved by animals.

 

Jill and Chiri, banded mongoose

All the many animals of my house

Vie without malice for these hands of mine,

Snuffle and push for just one finger, please!

And when they are engaged in household tasks

There is a jealousy that they should waste their touch

On beds and plates instead of them, the animals.

There seems to be some warmth, some understanding,

Or perhaps just love warming from every cell,

That brings an ease to the frightened and the hurt.

They come into my hands, these animals,

To live, to die, or maybe just to rest.

And little wild orphans, cold with shock

And terrified of every moving thing

Lie easy and grow warm and strong beneath these hands.

These hands of mine

Love the feel of fur, the beating heart, the reaching muzzle,

Though torn with the agony of some too-injured thing,

When pain-blind claws or fangs lash out, not understanding,

Do not complain.

Webbed with thin scars, roughed with work, and old,

More ugly than before, they need not hide,

But walk out in the sun with everyone else,

Because they are loved by animals –

These hands of mine.

(1972)

Hand-grooming

Jill demonstrates hand-grooming on Bay.
Note hip-pistol - it was wartime

Hand-grooming – or hand-rubbing as it is sometimes known – is a method long practiced by the Indians and Arabs.  It is possibly a better means of stimulating the skin than any other form of grooming and puts a marvellous gloss on the animal’s coat.  Because only the bare hands are used it is never irritating to the skin and horses and dogs alike usually love it.

            Because horses perspire over almost the entire surface of the body it is important to keep the skin in a clean and healthy condition.  Hand-grooming the legs of stabled horses stimulates the circulation not only in the skin but around the tendons and ligaments and helps to guard against “cracked heel”.

            Captain M H Hayes, in is book Stable Management and Exercise – a very old book but still well worth studying – describes it thus:

“In hand-rubbing above the knees and hocks, the stroke should be commenced by bringing the flat of the hand – each hand to be used alternately – well under the belly down the forearm, thigh or between the forelegs as the case may be, and it then should be drawn up with an even and firm pressure.  In doing this the weight of the body and strength of the arm should be utilised.

            The usual method adopted for hand-rubbing the legs below the knees and hocks is to kneel down or sit on one’s hams by the side of the leg which is to be manipulated and make alternate strokes downwards, while grasping the leg between forefinger and thumb.  The pressure exerted by the hands should be firm but by no means irritating.  The skin at the back of the pasterns should be well rubbed, so as to render it as dry and pliable as possible.”

He points out that although this technique is sufficient for ordinary grooming, in cases of sprain etc, this rubbing should be from the fetlock upwards, while the limb is held up off the ground.

            In hand-grooming the horse’s body, the coat may first be rubbed up with the fingertips or a wisp made of hay twisted to form a pad.  Then, starting at the nose, the hands stroke alternately with a long, firm action, following the lie of the coat.

            If the hands are dampened with water or cold strained tea, hand-grooming will help to keep the coat short.  However, the natural oil of the coat plus the friction of dry hands should suffice to bring any dirt up onto the palms and this must be rolled off periodically.

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Jill with Jana and Tisa

Although dogs perspire only from the mouth, nose and paw-pads, hand-grooming is also effective with them, especially the short-haired types, and once they get the idea, most dogs love it.

            Because of the firmness of the stroking, the dog must be able to brace himself against your legs, or against your lap if he is small and you kneel to groom him.

            Rub the coat all over the wrong way, with stiff fingertips, especially through the harder hair along the back.  By fingertips I mean the pads of the fingers, not the nails.  Lift and move the skin as you go, without pinching.  Then dampen your hands, if you wish, with water, with cold strained tea or, if it is the tick season, with a solution of one tablespoon of lamp paraffin in one quart of water.  Once again, beginning at the nose, stroke firmly over the dog, the way the hair lies.

            Do not expect him to keep still.  He will probably stiffen his body, lean against your legs, stamp and shift and toss his head about, the more so if he is enjoying it.  It may help to give him a cloth or a brush to hold in his mouth.

            I frequently try, without any success at all, to hand-groom my cats.  The method is excellent and most effective, but the cats refuse to stand still. After the first few strokes they begin to roll around, grasp my hands, kick my forearms playfully and generally become so purringly impossible that I give up, no matter how they plead for me to continue.

            Hand-grooming is quite hard work, but the health and shine of the animal’s coat will prove it well worth the effort.

Puzzlingly, Jill doesn’t here mention a primary benefit of hand-grooming – strengthening simple bonding and trust.  In addition, it’s the perfect way to pick up ticks, wounds, lesions or strange lumps hidden by the fur, so they can be dealt with timeously.  My cat actually loves a massage, and knows that anything I pick off her, tick or scab, can be explored in my fingers afterwards, and possibly eaten (by her, not me).

Mouse-eye view of the SPCA

From the mouse that ate the files that recorded the affairs of the animals that lived in the house that the SPCA built.

From my office-cum-storeroom, among the SPCA files, the dry goods and the baby food so kindly donated, I watch.

            This office was built for me in 1963.  For the thirty-six years before that I often had to rough it, but I watched.

            I watched a group of people put together their love of animals, their care and skill and what money they could, and form a living, growing, working idea – this Society.

            I watched them agree and disagree and debate, and settle their differences because animals in need were more important than people’s personalities.

            I watched them build safe, dry shelters for dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, birds, everyone, every kind, and I have watched these shelters fill and clear and fill again, times beyond counting.

            I have seen lost animals brought here, mindless with panic, ferocious with fear, in their confusion torn between their instinct to hide away and their desperate dependence on people.  Ah, and I have seen the tear-blinding, heaven-high joy of reunion.

            I have seen abandoned dogs stunned with disbelief that all they gave, all their love and trust, meant no more than paint upon a wall, admired for a while then left behind without a thought.

            Some have been left tied to empty houses, trapped by their chains as surely as by a snare.  Some have been taken to unfamiliar places and thrown away like paper, to blow and cry on a strange, unheeding wind.  And I have watched them grow anew the courage and confidence to trust again.

            I have seen the injured carried in, the ears of their minds closed against their screaming pain, thinking every hand must be against them, every road must lead to death.

            I have watched them heal and walk and run again, or watched their eyes close in the vast relief of final sleep brought by the vet who understands when enough is enough.

            I have seen cats, their clean, sleek pride broken by poverty, so scuffed by the careless boots of the world that I – even I – have wept.  And tiny kittens, still blind and deaf to that world, crying and reaching out with incredible, stubborn courage, for the only thing they know – their mother their universe.

            I have watched people too, choked with grief, bringing a  beloved animal they can no longer keep; people with their hearts in their eyes, offering their homes to one or two waifs and yearning to take them all; people, SPCA people, being greeted by name by all the animals at once and greeting them in turn.

            From my office, where I live fatly on the dry goods and baby food so kindly donated and the SPCA files thoughtfully made of our sweet, local paper, I watch the dignitaries and the children, the loving and the careless – I can tell them all – come to this special place and leave with new thoughts in their eyes.

            I watch cats play again, and dogs laugh and birds fly free on mended wings, and I think, what would become of this world if people no longer cared, but shrugged away from the silent cry in the eyes of an animal in need, were too heartless or too afraid to call an animal “little friend”.  I think it would cease to be a world at all and go back to lifeless rock.

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