Holsworthy dog’s claim to fame in latest book launch

Crikey, my picture's in the paper again! This time in the Bude & Stratton Post (16 February, 2012 edition).

In case you don't have your glasses, it says:

With Uggie, the canine star of ‘The Artist’ being nominated for a Golden Collar Award. could it be the turn of a Holsworthy dog to win a canine Booker Prize?

In Home Thoughts On Abroad, which has just been published, a 12-year old collie called Chloe has ‘written’ about her life since being transported from her five-acre home in Gidgegannup in the bush near Pert, Western Australia, where she had spent the first seven years of her life, to her new home in North Road, Holsworthy.

Her owners, Malcolm Orr and his wife Jeanette, who hails from Bude, returned to England in 2007 for family reasons after 27 years in Australia. They had to leave Chloe behind for six months in quarantine until she was able to fly to Heathrow.

Out of gratitude to the neighbours down under who had looked after her, they kept in touch through letters supposedly written by Chloe describing how she was adapting to her new life. Until arriving in Holsworthy, she had never lived in a street nor been taken out on a lead.

The letters, laced with generous doses of humour and Australian slang, were so enjoyed by his friends that Malcolm was persuaded to go into print. An enjoyable read for all dog lovers, it was published at the end of January. Copies, priced at £4.99, are available from the Holsworthy Information Centre and all good bookshops.


(Don't forget: Home Thoughts On Abroad is available from Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smith, The Book Depository, Hive, Lovereading, Mighty Ape (Australia) or direct from the publishers Austin & Macauley at a £4.79.)

The price of fame!

Greetings to my friends and fans,

                                                        

Well what do you know? Who would have thought that a Bitzer from the bush would become the glamour girl of Gidge. Yes my recently published book has brought me all the trappings of fame, well one or two of them anyway. So its goodbye Rin Tin Frigging Tin, you are history sunshine.

Move over and make room for Chloe the Wonder Dog, a new superstar is born.

My humans are running round like headless chooks as a media feeding frenzy descends on our house. Well, perhaps I am letting my Aussie love of a good yarn run away with me a bit. In fact we have had a camera wally from a paper called the North Devon Journal call in and do a bit of a Ron Sullivan, making us all sit in stupid positions which made our bums ache, and then flashing light bulbs at us until we could not see. But I must say the results were quite good though not in the same league as David Bailey O'Sullivan, who immortalised me on several occasions in the good old days in Oz. I gather from a phone conversation earlier today that another snapper from the Cornish Gazette is expected this afternoon for a photo opportunity. I hope my stupid humans are making a decent dollar out of all this and that the added income to the family budget will be reflected in the quality of tucker in my foodbowl.

    

Of course the anticipation that these guys will turn up and start looking at our kennel as a possible future feature for some fancy ideal home magazine, drives her indoors into a frenzy of cleaning, and all possible traces of my messy habits (e.g. dog fur on the Ercol 3 piece suite, bonio biscuits burried down the side of armchairs), have to be eliminated, and my male human is sent off to put clean clothes on (the first time this month).

    

But I digress from my theme (too much listening to her indoors on the phone). The word on my book is out there, and I am confidently expecting a call from Hollywood any moment now. I am also wondering if the Sun will ask me to be a page 3 pin-up feature, but my boss man says my legs are not sexy enough, even with my harness on. He must have funny tastes is all I can say!! Unfortunately the mean buggers have not allowed me to have a mobile phone, so there is no chance of some journo hacking into my private conversations, and me being able to sue them for vast quantities of dog chocs.

    

Of course being a celebrity has its downside.People keep stopping me in the street and asking me daft questions, like how has my life changed since I became famous? Well I have to say sadly it hasn't much. I still get chased off the settee whenever I try to roost there; I still get the same old booring diet of chicken breast and dog biscuits ("No don't give her that, it's too rich!"); I am still banished to the garden if I break wind ("I told you not to give her that rich food!"); and I still get yelled at when I try to give passing seniors with heart conditions a savage serve from the safety of my front garden. Meanwhile my humans seem to be basking in the glory of my success. Her indoors has bought at least three new outfits in case she has to be interviewed on radio, and my boss man sees it as a great opportunity to get stuck into a few bottles of Nigerian Chardonnay.

     

Well thats it for now. We stars have got to get plenty of rest to protect or natural beauty. Someone mentioned the possibility of giving me Botox. If they  are anything like Bonios, I'm all for it, but I have my suspicions that they might involve men in white coats sticking things into me, so I am keeping a low profile on that one.

                                          

Lots of love and licks to everyone.

                                                          

Chloe

Blimey, we're in the papers

Thanks to Mike Southon of the North Devon Journal for printing a picture of me with two other galahs who I see around the house occasionally.

In case you haven't got your reading glasses handy, it says:

A collie cross called Chloe has "written" a book on her adventures from Australia to Holsworthy.

Home Thoughts On Abroad chronicles the 11-year-old dog's journey to England after spending seven years living on a five-acre home in Western Australia.

Her owners, Malcolm and Jeanette Orr, returned to North Devon after 27 years in Australia because of family reasons.

They kept in touch with friends down under who had looked after Chloe during her six months quarantine through a series of letters written from their pet's perspective.

Malcolm said: "The book comprises a series of letters, ostensibly written by her, which from the dog's perspective, tell friends back in Australia of her personal experiences, and of our joint efforts to settle back into a new and very different life here.

"I did not set out to write the letters with a book in mind, but as a means of keeping in touch with some very good friends."

The Red Arrow book, Home Thoughts On Abroad, was published by Austin & Macauley this week.

WRITE STUFF: Malcolm and Jeanette Orr with their dog Chloe.

Picture: Mike Southon. To order this photograph call 0844 4060 269 and quote Ref: BNMS20120131E-002_C

Author Profile - Chloe the Dog

Don't believe a word of what you may have read about Malcolm Orr being the author - of course he isn't, it's me, Chloe the Dog, and I've got the pictures to prove it!

First though, here's what the book looks like:

It shows me flying from Australia to England, which is evidently a much bigger country than some people think.

And if you like that picture, you'll love these - of the author no less, and commissioned from well known artist Chris Orr.

Here I am in my favourite pose, waiting to deliver a ball to your feet (well, within a yard or so - just enough to have to make you get up to retrieve it for me).

And here I am one second after I've been told that I'm going on a walk or that my food is ready...

And here I am back with a ball again, since it is one of my favourite poses.

So I ask you, who could resist? No-one, and you shouldn't resist picking up my lovely new book Home Thoughts On Abroad, available from Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smith or direct from the publishers Austin & Macauley at a giveaway price!

Good on ya!

Chloe 

Author Profile - Malcolm Orr

I am a retired University Administrator living in Holsworthy, East Devon, with my wife Jeanette, a prominent quilt maker in the region. I spent the first part of my career working in English Universities and Polytechnics. I moved to Australia in 1981 to take up the position of Registrar at The University of Western Australia.

I retired in 2000 and Jeanette and I moved to a country property just outside Perth W.A., where we acquired Chloe, a Border Collie Cross, but crossed with what we are still not sure. She became a very important part of our lives, so much so that when we returned to England in 2007 to help look after Jeanette`s mum, who was then in her late 80`s, we felt that we had to have her with us. And so after six months quarantine with neighbours, much angst on our part, and considerable cost, she finally fronted up at Heathrow, courtesy of Quantas and a company called “Jet Pets”, who had coordinated her transportation with great care and consideration, certainly more than the unfortunate convicts received when they made the journey in the other direction in the nineteenth century.

    

My book Home Thoughts On Abroad began as a series of letters, purportedly from the dog, as a means of saying thankyou to the people in Australia who had looked after her during her quarantine. I had no intention of seeking a publisher, until I was persuaded to do so by people  who had read and enjoyed the letters. I was naturally surprised when Austin and Macauley expressed interest in them, and somewhat doubtful about getting involved in such an enterprise. But in the end vanity prevailed. The book is now out there, and hopefully will provide readers with a few laughs. Anyone who has had had any connections with Australia will find the book of special interest, particularly so if they are dog lovers.

Malcolm Orr, January, 2012

Press Release

Talking animals have been relatively prominent in light adult literature for some time, and the reader contemplating buying “Home Thoughts On Abroad” might be forgiven for thinking “Oh no, not another cute canine telling us about her great adventures”. Wrong! This is something quite different. The twenty plus letters in his book, purportedly written by a dog from the Australian bush, chronicle with considerable humour and sharp observation, the trauma for a much loved, true blue Aussie Collie, of being transported from her five acre home in rural Western Australia to a new life in a town house in the West of England. She tells her story with a nice injection of colourful Aussie patois, gleaned from her home environment.

The book will appeal to all dog lovers, with the possible exception of the refined members of the  “Crufts Set”. It will resonate in particular with Brits who have made the big move “Down-Under” and stayed there or returned to Britain with friendships and other connections still in place, and with Aussies living here now and feeling occasional pangs of homesickness for their old sunburned land.

The author of the letters set out to write them to the Australian friends who had looked after the dog during her six months quarantine, as a means of saying thankyou for doing so. As the letters were developed and attracted an interest among other friends still living there, they became an important means of keeping in touch with the life he and his wife had to leave behind when they returned to England for family reasons. This provides a very human counterpoint to the dog's view of the world. The book will appeal at different levels to everyone above the age of 15 who has ever owned a dog.

Published by Austin and Macauley. ISBN 9781849631136, Publication Date 31 January 2012 and available to pre-order from Amazon here.

My new book to be published in late January 2012

Greetings to my fellow Australians, and to all youse Pommies who are out there waiting to join up. My name is Chloe, and I was once a fun-loving dog, living in a small watering hole called Gidgegannup, in the western bit of the old sun-burned land, not far from the great city of Perth. I spent many happy days there baking my bum in the sun, chasing chooks and roos, digging up flowerbeds, and giving a right royal serve to any mongrels who dared to venture onto our property. I was also getting plenty of good tucker, including Coles Dog Chocs, and the odd cheese and biscuit around beer-o-clock time.

Then suddenly my owners went walk about, and I was sent back to the kennel where I was born. I was eventually transported in a cage on a big silver bird to this strange place called England, where it rains most days and the blokes think they can play cricket (In their dreams!!).

But it wasn`t all bad. I did meet up with my owners again, and got a load of laughs from their efforts to resettle into this weird country.

If you want to read my story, you must buy a copy of Home Thoughts On Abroad, yours for only a few dollars, which includes a donation to my retirement fund. It will bring tears to your eyes and make your belly ache with laughing.

Don’t forget, Home Thoughts On Abroad, ghost written by my male human, Malcolm Orr who spent several years helping to look after the old Uni down in Nedlands, and published by Austin and Macauley, available  from the end of January 2012 at your local bookshop or newsagents, and on line from amazon.com here.

ISBN 9781849631136