Inca: The Canine Guru’s Guide
Let’s go back to 2011: a time of austerity, a tsunami hits Japan, Game of Thrones premieres, Osama Bin Laden is killed, and my husband and I move out of London, to start a new life on the coast with our two small children. It was all rather lovely, what with the renovations, the unpopulated beach, the starry nights and bird song. The only trouble was, within a short time my husband went back to the city and, well, he stayed there.
Seven years since the divorce, we get along fine. Marriages end (20% in the first five years, apparently), but no one warns you about the shame and grief that comes when it’s not your decision, or about the pity looks at the school gates. To the locals, we were just the weird couple who’d moved to the countryside to split up in a more picturesque location.
All parents know how to put on a brave face and fake it. But no one warns you it’s a master class in selflessness. Half the time you want to say, “Erm, sorry about this, but I’m going back to the 90’s to smoke dope with my boyfriend and talk about living in Paris after university.” When there’s two of you, the enterprise is manageable; on your own…well, a padded cell becomes an inviting prospect.
During what can only be described as The Crazy Years, I got by with the help of marmite on toast, friendly, yet horrified new neighbours and sleep. I was living in a state of shock, stress, and all those other emotions that don’t get invited to Life’s party. Someone I loved had died, and yet he was still breathing, sending me officious emails, discussing maintenance (with a notebook and pen in hand, as if our marriage were a crime scene), and treating me like a stranger.
Prodded by concerned pals, I went to a counsellor.
“You can keep it friendly, but you’ll never be friends again,” he said, so serenely it made me want to punch him in the face.
That was not possible. Ex-husband and I had made and loved small people; of course we’d stay friends. The beatific counsellor was obviously nuts. Only, he wasn’t. This phase of divorce is like being mugged on a daily basis. Your happy life robbed, you simply have to keep going, even with all the cuts and bruises that no one can see.
I was coping fine. That was until my body started to betray me. First, I began to lose weight, no matter how much marmite on toast I ate, and then, joy of joys, my hair started to leap from my head, in handfuls. My fingers would go in and fifteen strands would come out, again and again. I’d heard of the stress hormone, cortisol, how it jumped on your back when you least expected it. But cortisol is not some cheeky little monkey; it’s a ferocious sea. The sight of all this hair in my hands sent a wave of it crashing over me. After that, all I could do was paddle hard and try not to drown.
I didn’t have time to be ill. I was moving the children for the second time in two years, raising, commuting, consoling, making promises I was sure I couldn’t keep. But there came a time when I could put it off no longer.
“It’s your age,” said the exhausted looking man with the stethoscope.
“I’m only 40.”
“You’re likely perimenopausal. Something you’ll need to accept. Are you suffering from any stress?”
“God, no!” I didn’t want him taking my blood pressure and scaring us both.
I decided to take matters into my own hands and sought solace in the local health food shop. I bought every hair related supplement the human mouth could swallow. The shop assistant, who prided herself on knowing everything about her products, became a little frightened, as each week I bounded in, eyes ablaze with excitement over yet another solution I had unearthed on the Internet.
“So, I’ve discovered nettle root mixed with MSM and saw palmetto is helpful.”
“Yes, but saw palmetto is for men with prostate issues.”
“Give it to me,” I said, resisting the urge to drag her to the erectile dysfunction aisle.
I tried to go on dates, you know, get my flirt on, stop being Mum the whole time and live a little. It was entertaining, bizarre, flattering even. In the moment, I could pretend to be another person (apologies to the men who had the misfortune to collide with me), someone who wasn’t constantly obsessing about balding and imminent death. The date would go well, and then the inevitable kiss would take place, I would see his hand reach for my hair and…
“Thanks a lot mate,” I’d say in a poor Australian accent, followed by a playful punch to the shoulder. The (un)lucky suitor would be confused. What happened to hottie McHotstuff? Why had she been replaced by Hugh Jackman in drag?
The gods have a sick sense of humour. 2016, halfway through this shedding adventure, I took a job presenting for a hair volumizing product on QVC. I had no money and no choice, other than a side angle as an escort, which, in hindsight would have been the less humiliating, and possibly, more fun option.
I would sit in the make-up chair before filming and watch as the stylist brushed out hair after hair. We pretended not to notice the irony falling to the floor. They fired me after a couple of months, perhaps because my locks had the lustre of a heroin addict, or perhaps because they sensed my heart was not in a mousse that, “Backed by science,” would “give your hair vavavoom.”
One summer’s afternoon, instead of sitting in a park sipping Campari, as in days gone by, I found myself perched on the edge of a plastic chair in a famous hair loss clinic. A woman – wearing a mask of make-up and a push up bra that hardly contained her generous bosom, beneath what had to be a fetish lab coat – wrenched my hair to one side. Exposing scalp and pointing to a screen above us so we could both take a horrified look, she told me in a thick, possibly Russian accent, that I had inherited my father’s genes and that I would go completely bald. “Inevitable, like man.” There was nothing for it, except to hand over vast sums of money and take their pills for the rest of my life. Even in my distressed state, I knew to step away from the white coat, intimidating breasts and painted mouth that made promises dripping with long term dependency.
Then came August, 2018, and a solution in the form of a couple of turkey chicks. They changed everything. The kids were staying on a farm in Norfolk with their Dad and his girlfriend. Four years had passed, and we were doing a superb job of parenting apart. There was just the occasional glitch, such as this one. A message came through: They’re going to FaceTime you now with a request, get ready. When my darling children appeared on the screen, muddy faced and smiling, they were not alone, in their arms were two furious looking baby dinosaurs. I recoiled but managed to make it look like a ripple of enthusiasm.
“Dad says, if you get the garden ready by tomorrow, you know, the turkey hut and the fox protector, then we can bring them home,” said my daughter.
My son went to peck his dinosaur on the cheek, it pecked back, in a way that had me looking around for Sam Neill to come rescue us all.
The unutterable bastard! (the ex, not the children, or the turkey – no one can blame the turkey). I looked out at the patch of mud we called a garden.
“Leave it with me.”
“We’ll have them,” said my no-nonsense Scottish midwife friend with the chicken run. “But just make sure the bairns understand, come Christmas, we’ll eat one and they can eat the other.”
I relayed the message; it did not go down well.
“Why would you want to kill Babette and Birdie?” cried my son.
“I’m going vegetarian,” declared my daughter.
“We will never forgive you!” they growled together.
I thought the worst was over, but no. When they were dropped back, all suntanned and full of mischief, ex-husband hovered in the doorway.
“I’ve told them that if you say yes, I’ll help look after them.”
I turned to the kids, who were almost kneeling, palms in plea, eyes wide with manipulation and hope.
“Say ‘yes’ to what?”
Somehow, as if I were on acid, the little blighters’ eyes widened still further.
Ex-husband smirked.
“Two kittens.”
There isn’t much I’m afraid of in this life (actually that’s a lie, I’m afraid of tight spaces, horses, what lies beneath the waves, cancer and death) but cats take the top spot, and well he knows it. Before I had time to form a controlled response, he’d scarpered, leaving the two anime characters staring up at me.
“I’m sorry, no.”
Immediately our home became a house of mourning. Pets that would never be, murdered before they even had a chance to bite or scratch us. How could I be so heartless? How could I deny them their one, albeit sudden, desire in life? Sure, it was turkeys yesterday, but today it was felines, who definitely would not attack us in our sleep and make the house smell of the lonely cat woman I feared I would one day become.
“What about a dog?” I yelled over their wailing. There was a pause in the emotional onslaught. They stared at each other, then eyed me, suspiciously.
“You serious?”
Oh, I was. I was not going to be accused of failing my children because I didn’t want poultry or predators living among us. We gathered around my computer and Googled ‘dogs that don’t shed’ because only one of us could be constantly covering the floor in hair. That is how an amazing soul, (possibly Gandhi hidden beneath the soft black fur of a cockapoo) came into our lives.
This part is a little grim, so I will be English about it and just say that there was only one thing wrong with Inca as a puppy: his digestion. Whatever I fed him made a swift exit an hour or so later. We went through endless options, from gastro-sensitive kibble to white rice and chicken – nothing worked. So, a few months ago, I turned to him and explained that henceforth he would be on a grain free diet, just to see if that helped. He cocked his head to one side; I felt we understood each other.
In a ludicrous gesture of solidarity, I promised to sacrifice my marmite on toast, pasta and night-time cereal addiction. I know all he heard was, “Blah, blah, blah,’ in various vocal pitches, but at least I knew we were in this together. I drew the line at eating the same meaty concoctions he was given, however delicious they smelt. (As an aside, if you are looking for an easy way to feed your dog healthy food, butternutbox.com is a good idea. Inca’s coat has never been so soft.)
A month later, not only had I solved the riddle of my dog’s digestion, I had also inadvertently hit on why my hair might be falling out: Gluten.
www.verywellhealth.com/alopecia-areata-and-celiac-disease-563106
After cutting out the sticky stuff, I started to gain weight and my hair stopped falling out. It just stopped. Overjoyed and fascinated, I probed a little deeper and discovered that our microbiome is more closely linked to dogs than previously thought.
Now – because of my dog’s digestive tract – I brush my hair without holding my breath, I step into the shower without that sinking feeling of knowing more troops will be sacrificed to the plughole, and occasionally I ask random men to run their hands through my hair. (O.K. that’s a lie, but it would be a fun social experiment on the Tube.)
I’m not saying that grief, stress and our hormones aren’t a factor in hair loss, but often the answer to our problems is right under our noses and on our plates. In my case, it’s beneath my feet, begging for some of the children’s naan bread.
“Oh no, my little saviour. You and I are gluten free and hairy from now on.”
For the record, the counsellor was wrong. Inca debunked the ‘never be friends with your ex’ theory with his astounding diplomatic skills (aka being too loveable). Since his arrival, there has been an entente cordial between ex-husband and me. But that’s for another post entitled: The Guru’s Guide to Sharing Your Balls.
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