GURSEL & ELLY (& kate bush)

by Michelle Ransom-Hughes, featuring Gursel

Gursel

(A poodle barks)

She was the most beautiful dog, the prettiest dog, and wherever we went girls would stop, and just go, “Oh my God, look at that dog!”

I can remember once at the Victoria Market, one woman and her mother stopped me, and said, “That dog is ridiculous”.

The mother literally, seriously, said, ``I will hold him, you grab the dog and run!” And I said, “Over my dead body!”

Then another time we were in Prahran sitting outside of a cafe, and they were doing some building across the way, there was some scaffolding across the road and all these...

It was bloody the middle of summer and lots of shorts and arms going on across the road. Lots of legs and arms, you know what I’m saying?

So Elly’s sitting beside me. Um, the boys break for lunch, three of those sluggers come crossing the road, and I’m going, Oh my god.

One of them says, “Mate, how much for the dog?”

I say, “I beg your pardon?”

“How much for your dog?”

“Well, She’s actually not for sale…”

“Well, we’ve been watching you for three hours buddy, and that dog is a chick magnet, and we want your dog.”

(Laughs) Oh God, she was funny. She was a showstopper, honestly.

Michelle

This is Gursel, and these stories are a world away from his childhood, growing up in suburban Melbourne, with his Turkish mum and his siblings.

Dogs are only now becoming part of Turkish life. Having said that, it's still a very bourgeois thing to own a dog.

Actually, the word for dog is kind of like a swear. The word for dog is ‘kopek’ and when you use the word kopec, it's like calling someone a dirty pig.

For instance my sister, my older sister, came back a couple of years ago from Cyprus where we originate from, and she said, “Oh my God you’ve got that kopec in this house?” So.... it’s very different.

We didn’t have a dog, but we pretended to have dogs, we pretended to be normal.

Being a wog was obviously different and not easy. You used to look at your Australian neighbours and friends at school and kind of try and emulate them.

You know and they all had dogs, they had gardens and well trimmed houses and lalalalala.

And the wogs were completely different, whereas you know the white kids would have roses in their front yards, and we'd have olives and lemon trees.

If you don’t already know, “a wog” is old Aussie slang meaning people who migrated here from Europe after WW2. From Italy, Greece and Turkey in particular.

Gursel was a school kid in the 1970s, when wogs like him copped a lot of prejudice

I can remember there was this kind of red coloured Alsatian a few doors up and I’d just borrow him. And I used to tie a bit of rope around him... and pretend he was my dog… and walk around... But everyone in the street knew what was going on.

I kind of remember actually cutting daffodils from someone's garden and pushing them in the ground of our house, and tying the dog up outside our house, so we were really normal: we had a dog and we had daffodils.

(Laughs) You know, things like that. I know it’s sweet and sad.

I’m Michelle Ransom-Hughes and this is Oh My Dog.

It was winter in Melbourne when Gursel and I talked across his kitchen table.

A little poodle with bright eyes was curled in his lap. I hope you’ll make yourself comfortable, and take in the story of Gursel, Elly and Kate Bush.

Elly’s the hero of the story. She was Gursel’s first real dog. She became his road buddy. She was a surfer, and a farm dog, and she turned out to be a bit of a miracle worker.

All of this in the unlikely form of a little red poodle, sharing life with an artist who came within a whisker of death.

As for Kate Bush, I don’t think I need to tell you who she is, but the story can’t be told without her.

Song: Come to Me (Oh My Dog theme)

Gursel was a kid when he last saw his father. His mum bought him a one way ticket back to Cypress and got on with raising the family herself.

She was a talented dressmaker, and Gursel learned how to sew by helping her at night with piecework.

As a schoolboy, Gursel was a soprano singer, and a dreamer. He helped his mum keep house by cooking and cleaning.

And he also became a champion sprinter… by running from the boys at school who wanted to beat him up, for being different.

School was hell for him, save for one or two teachers.

When I was 17… 16 or 17, my mother said, “We've got to go back to Cypress and see your grandmother, my mother”.

She said,” I think she's going to die and we've gotta go and see her before she dies”.

And so we had to take a lot of time off school. And my English literature teacher who saw my talent, said to me, “While you're gone, I want you to struggle, but read this book”.

And it was “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte.

Well, I took it, and I did struggle, but there I was. I can remember getting to Cypress, and I’ll never forget this moment.

My granny was divine, in this tiny little village on the coast of Cypress...

She used to wrap for me in a tea towel, a portion of cheese, a quarter of bread, some salami and some other cheeses and some tomatoes and olives.

Wrap those up in the cloth, and then I'd go out to the coast and sit under this orange tree in an orange grove, ‘cause our family grew oranges, and reading this book.

(SFX: static from a transistor radio signal)

And I used to take with me, my grandmother’s transistor radio.

And there I was, trying to read this book, and then, I could just get this scratchy little signal from BBC World.

And they said, “Oh here's this extraordinary new girl and ah, we don't really know much about her, but she’s just got an amazing voice and her name’s Kate Bush and here’s her song, Wuthering Heights”.

(SFX: a few bars of tinkly piano, reminiscent of the opening of that song)

And there I am with the book in my hand, and I hear this voice... just floating out across the sea.

Everything was changed after that. Everything. Like, everything was changed after that.
Finished the book. Oh, got the album, first thing I did. And um yeah well that just started a lifelong passion with her.

With a new vision of life beyond the suburbs, Gursel found his way to study fashion and design at art school.

Then he made a living working in every creative department of Melbourne's film and TV industry, and loved it.

When the intensity of that world burned him out after a decade or so...

and depression started creeping in, he shifted gears and reinvented himself, opening a boutique.

I wasn't a very successful homosexual.

In the sense that there was a culture and a gay life, and that consisted of some certain pubs and it was a very small world in Melbourne…

and there were certain pubs that the gays would go to or some nightclubs. And you know that club life never really resonated with me, or that kind of dance world, or the party scene never really was me. I was too sensitive.

I found the music too objectionable, too loud, and the gays too vicious. I didn’t match the criteria of the physique, or the typical....

Everything was wrong. I’d never had a boyfriend.

I used to long to have partners or meet guys, and my gay friends would take me out to nightclubs, and I used to watch them all screw and I’d just be just going what the hell? You know?

But what I did notice was that travel took me out of Melbourne, and I had a lot more luck overseas.

Enchanted by southeast Asia, he walked away from the arts, and found steady work with a travel company.

The depression he’d been struggling with in Melbourne seemed to lift.

It was a fantastic time in my life. Oh my god it was awesome. I’d take people from, from the north of Vietnam, to the very south of Malaysia, across to Bali and back to Bangkok was where I was based.

It was extraordinary. The nineties was a great time to see southeast Asia.

So basically what happened was that I became very promiscuous, because I’d had a very protected, um, not a very rich sex life as a young adult and...

I was so kind of sheltered, and innocent. And there I was out in the world and…

And the men were beautiful and I became very, unfortunately, stupidly, very promiscuous in that time, and exposed myself.

I kind of suspected… you know as a gay man at that time…

Mind you, HIV had gone through the 80s and.. and… I think I was very naive.

After three years in Asia, he becomes ill, and knows he has to come home.

Gursel says every gay man of his generation has a plan - a plan for the day the HIV test comes back positive.

I had my plan, which was: never tell Mum. because she's Turkish, dramatic and crazy.

The world is gonna end and the sky is gonna fall. And I’m gonna have to deal with that, rather than myself. So I thought no, don't put her through that.

On trip to the Blue Mountains, Gursel gives blood for an HIV test.

On the doctor’s forms, under next of kin, he puts down his mother's phone number.

Remember, this is the days before mobiles. Then he goes back to Melbourne, and waits...

And the doctor rang that phone number, and my mother picked up the phone and being the woman that she was, she got it out of him.

So then she went into panic mode, rang all of my friends: “Oh my God, he's going to die! He’s going to die!”.

All this was happening behind my back.

I'm at home living with a friend, and the phone rings and it's the doctor from the Blue Mountains. I go, how did you get this number? “Oh, I rang your mother's place and she gave it to me.”

And he tells me, my heart sinks. Hang up.

It’s confirmed. He’s HIV positive.

Twenty minutes later it’s him again, on the phone.

He said I've gotta tell you something even worse, and I said “What?”

And he said, “Your mother knows”. And I said, “Great, well you've just changed everything”.

Oh, it was just terrible. I was in panic, I was in shock.

And then one of my girlfriends rang me up and she said, “Your mother has literally told everyone you know”.

Oh my god I was so humiliated. Because I had my plan, my plan was to be private, select a few people perhaps try some alternative medicines… start the journey.

But of course I just felt like I was out of control. The whole thing was taken away.

Sitting right there when he got that diagnosis, giving him all her weight.. was a dog.

I was living with my gorgeous friend Noeline Blizzard, one of the most marvellous women I've ever met. And we had a dog between us called Nikki.

And Nikki was a kind of silky-haired border collie, beautiful dog, beautiful nature, smart as a whip, She blessed our house.

So of course after my diagnosis I thought, You know what I’m getting out of Melbourne. I'm gonna go and get away from all of these people.

I just needed to run. I thought okay, I'm gonna get myself a dog, and we're gonna go to the country, and then we’ll see where we go from there...

And a very generous friend of mine, who... who was an actor, very successful actor, had a heap of money, bought me a gorgeous car and said, “You do what you want, and get out”.

So I bought a 1964 Valiant Safari station wagon, which was pale blue and gorgeous interior, it was in excellent condition, it hummed like a beast.

A friend of mine had some property in Castlemaine and I thought I'll just go and stay there for a while until I can work things out.

The phone rang, it was another friend of ours, and he said, “Gursel, I hear you've been kind of looking for a dog. And we’ve just had a litter but it’s an extraordinary dog, and she’s the last of the litter”.

And I said, “What is it? What is this dog that you're talking about?”

He said, “It’s a toy poodle.”

And I said, “Oh come, on. Look, I'm going to live in the country. I'm looking for a border collie, and she's gotta be, she’s gonna be a farm dog, okay? But thanks for the offer.

He said, “No look, this dog is really special and every time this dog comes to me, I think of you. We're having a party, come and meet her.”

Party was the last thing I wanted to go to.

He went, of course he went.

And the puppy was being kept away from the crowd, locked in the laundry.

Long story short: I go and see her in the laundry, shut the laundry door, and she was a little toy red poodle, she could fit in your two little hands like that.

I just looked at her, cutest thing! Course, you know, if you love dogs, you love dogs.

Three times in that party, amongst all those people, she escaped three times, and found her way to me. And jumped up on my lap. I thought, okay it’s a sign.

So I took her, she came home with me.

Noeline freaked out! She said, “What the hell have you done? You've got a toy poodle.”

(Giggling) I said, “I know. I know, I know. I’ve got a toy poodle”.

Two weeks, or maybe three weeks later, I took the Valiant Safari out, and had her fitted for sheepskins covers on back and front.

It was like a sheepskin paradise for little Elly and she just thought she was in heaven in that car! Well of course, we arrived at this little country house, and she was mine and we were together.

And this little dog and I, just went on the hugest adventure.

In case you’re wondering, Gursel’s doctors had prescribed him courses of drugs, but feeling physically quite well, he was loath to take them.

He’d watched on in the 80s as the AIDS crisis was made worse by big pharma. He’d seen people die.

So until the drugs improved, he placed his faith in retreating to the country, growing organic food, living cleanly, and keeping company with his one and only Elly.

But of course I had no idea what a nightmare a puppy would be. ‘Cause it's like having a child.

I used to put her out at 4 in the morning and say look if you want to play, go play. It was terribly negligent.

But I'd get up at 8 and go, “Oh my God the dog’s out, I'm such a bad father”.

And I’d go out and try and find her. And I'd walk down this little lane, dirt road, and I’d see the most extraordinary things.

Like down the end of this lane there was a beautiful water tower, and there was a donkey tethered in this tiny paddock.

And I’d see Elly up on her hind legs, and this donkey, literally leaning down and they're kind of kissing each other.

Or you know she’d find the pony down the way and she’d be smelling and wandering the paddock with this little pony.

So it was like a children's picture book. I mean she had a whole nother world outside of me.

There were some sheep across the way, and she’d go and see them. There were goats. And she had this absolute menagerie and they all adored her.

She’d kiss them, they kiss her back. It was adorable. I did a few drawings of her with this beautiful old horse that she befriended. And they'd just go for a little wander, you know?

When they later moved to a farmhouse, in the middle of a 500 acre cattle farm. Elly proved herself as handy as any farm dog in spite of how she looked

She is only about as big as a rabbit, And she was red, curly-haired, floppy-eared and um of course she didn't have any of the poodle haircut, but I was very good with a pair of scissors, so I used to give her her own little cut.

I used to kind of cut her something like a terrier, so I’d trim her little ears down and she’d have a moustache like an airedale. So she kind of looked like a terrier.

So she wasn't as mincey as one would think a poodle would be.

And I remember I used to open the back gate, Elly would bolt down to the dam and she’d start rounding up the cattle.

And I’m thinking, Oh my god she's just like a border collie. She’d literally gather them and corner them.

What was hysterical was the grass was taller than her, and so she’d jump over the grass, hop all the way down to the bloody dam.

And I remember one day we went down and we walked across this creek and saw some kangaroos up the way and I thought we'd better not go there or she’ll chase them she’ll try and round them up, and she’ll get whacked by one of their tails.

So we went up to top of this rise, so I’m sitting up there on a rock, and she’s sitting beside me, and then this group of kangaroos came by.

And this big male with a few females was just standing in front of me, (thumping) thumping his chest like this and I’m thinking, oh fuck, we are done.

And he’s throwing his hands out. And I’m thinking, is he scaring me away? Looks like he's pointing at something.

His hands are flying up and he’s punching his chest, and his hands are flying up.

And I look up, and not two feet above my head, is a hawk circling Elly, thinking, there’s my lunch.

So I've just grabbed this branch that was beside me and waved it around and he went. And then the kangaroos passed, and we went home.

Three years passed in this fashion - idyllic farm life and Skippy sub-plots.

Gursel was still avoiding drug therapies, and staying well, but for his mental health needed to escape the Victorian winter.

He and Elly loaded up the Valiant - and pointed it north, headed for the surf beaches of Sydney and beyond.

There I'd be in the car, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the back rest, and Elly would either be right next to me, or just sprawled out the way dogs…

Do you know how a dog can actually stretch itself out from point to point? She’d be like that. She was the Queen of Sheba in that car. Absolutely.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been inside a 64 Valiant Safari, but it’s very big.

And it's bench seats front and back, and so that’s bench seats covered in fluffy white sheepskin, which is like a paradise for a poodle.

It was a push button auto, nice and open down the front of the seat... Even the back, ah, the rest that you lean your back on, that's nice and square.

So Elly could sit on that square if she was waiting in the car for me, if i had to go to the shops or something.

Back seat was the same, which used to fold down and that became our bed.

I’d have Kate Bush blaring, and we would be listening to the latest album, The Red Shoes, which came out in ‘93.

She had a big break from 93 to 2005, and I’ll get to that.

The thing is about Kate Bush albums, is that for anyone who’s into her, they kind of become the punctuation marks for your life’s course.

Elly grew up with Kate, absolutely. Like I could put on a few of Kate’s songs, and calm Elly down if she needed to be quiet for a while.

Songs like Moments of Pleasure… or, This Woman's Work. Beautiful piano. I think Kate’s at her best when she’s just piano and voice, without all the big production.

But um, yeah, we went to everywhere. We went to Queensland...all through the east, basically up and down the east coast of Australia.

Brilliant car. We’d park on a cliff and watch the ocean.

One dreadful… Oh Elly I’m so sorry... I’ll never forget one night, I was so sound asleep and the storm was blowing...

And I used to leave the side door ajar for her so she could jump out in the night and go and do her business and she’d jump back in.

But the wind had blown the door shut so she was stuck out in this storm. The poor dear was out in this dreadful, dreadful storm.

And I got out in the morning and where's my dog? Where's my baby? My God! And she was just a wretched, shivering, wet little poppet, hiding behind the front wheel.

Oh but anyway she wouldn't have left me for quids and she was my constant companion.

They made regular trips back to the farm and to the doctors. But with each blood test things began to look more grim

Look, it wasn't long before I had to come back to Melbourne because I got a bit crook. I had a few close calls.

When Gursel became gravely ill, he’d be secluded in a private room, of a special ward, at a highly specialised facility.

He had the best of care - but he didn’t have Elly. She’d have to stay with friends.

Dogs weren't allowed, but they’d sneak her in. Cause Elly was so small and portable that I could tuck her into a bag and get her into any shop, or any restaurant, even the cinema.

So ‘no dogs allowed’ was basically something we didn't even abide to at all! Look she was like me, I always loved breaking rules, and I could put her under my jumper and no one would even know she was there.

Anyway, once she learned where I was… if I was in a hospital bed on a bloody drip, at 61 kilos nearly checking out of the hotel... Elly could jump out of the car, bolt past the receptionist, past all the doctors and nurses, they wouldn't even know something had happened.

They'd just like, “Was that something that went by?”

Find my room, jump up on my bed, and just sit on my chest, and give me chin kisses. And just… Honestly that girl.

You know the doctors were confounded by me, because I still refused the medication.

They were confounded. They couldn't work it out, because everything looked crook. I was going.

M: What do you put it down to?

G: I don't know. I just think I'm resilient, and I think it was her, I think it was Elly.

I don't want to overstate but I just think that dogs... Not only do they sense when you're unwell, I think they can actually heal.

It was 2005, and there was Gursel seriously ill, when with the most impeccable timing, Kate Bush released a new album.

It was her first in 12 years and it was called “Aerial”.

Such a stunning piece of music, so the first side is a series of five songs, unrelated. The second side is conceptual: it’s from morning til night, til morning. And it’s birdsong and it’s beautiful.

I had my computer with Aerial the album on loop 24/ 7. Didn't stop. And Elly with her regular daily visits.

Ariel was on a loop, and Elly was on my heart. And call it a miracle, but you know what, that happened three times.

And over the next three years I was hospitalised for different conditions, and each time was a really close call.

And each time that album and that dog were there.

But fast forward past that… I got so strong and well after all of that.

M: Did you see that you were going to be well?

G: Yeah I didn't think I was going to die ever.

They were convinced. Absolutely convinced. I still go back to that.

I mean I’m so well. And also by then the drugs had changed and they started me on the newer drugs.

Now the new gen drugs are amazing, you just… But they didn’t think I was going to bounce back because my poor body had been through so much.

But I kinda knew. I just kind of think I'm gonna be like the rest of my family. We don’t die til we’re 99. (laughing)

Gursel’s living proof that you can be well, and live well with an HIV positive status. He could quite feasibly live to be 99.

Elly did something comparable - in dog terms.

She went until she was 17, which is a long haul for a dog.

I got a part-time job and started painting a lot. We were in a really good place, reconnected with a lot of old friends.

And things were doing really well. Elly’s getting older and she’d still go with me, we’d still take long car trips and we’d still go camping a lot.

But she's getting blind, and you can see the cataracts moving across the eyes, and the eyes are getting white and cloudy…

She’s losing her puppy hair.. and she’s going bald.

Then finally (giggle).. finally she goes deaf.

So Helen went from… Not Helen! Did you hear what I just called her? I called her Helen, my Freudian slip.

Because, I used to call her Helen Keller, because she was deaf and blind, and she used to bounce off things, isn’t that awful? (giggling)

But look, we loved each other, and she took it in great humour.

My friends thought I was awful.

But she knew where she was. She knew where her bowl was. And I always said to myself, look, you're gonna keep going Elly, until you let me know.

And when you’re not right, you’re gonna let me know.

And she was my best friend, she went through everything,. Every single thing we went through. She knew everything. She knew every Kate Bush song in the world

M: Was she the keeper of your secrets?

G: Yes. I didn’t even have to speak them to her. I didn’t need to speak to her.

We had a non-verbal communication which is why I think that she coped so well and went for so long as a deaf and blind dog...

Because our communication was non-verbal. It got to the point where...she could sense, if we were about to visit someone, she’d know where we were.

She’d get out and run to their door and wait for me to get there, and she’d run and say hello to those people.

Or if we were going to the doctors or to Safeway or to anywhere, she knew where she was. Isn't that extraordinary?

Um, but but yeah - I just knew… Because she was really failing.

And I came home from work and she slept all day. And that's okay because let sleeping dogs lie, and you know, what better way to spend your senior years than to just sleep all day?

And god dammit in 2011 Kate Bush writes an album, and the second song is about an old dog.

It’s like Kate’s right on time as well.

“The dog is sleeping, his legs are frail now, but when he dreams, he runs”.

And you know that little twitch you see in a sleeping dog’s legs? You just know they're running along a beautiful beach or running through a wood, or chasing a stick that mommy or daddy’s thrown… or... You know what I mean?

For years Elly persisted like this. Gursel’s constant companion. Then, in 2014, the announcement Gurs waited his whole life to hear.

Kate Bush will give her first concert in 35 years.

Gursel buys a ticket for London, and counts down the days. Beneath his excitement is fear for Elly, she’s now 17 years old, and fading fast.

Elly was really crook. And I knew.

So, I pretended to go to work one day, and looked through the window. And I’d left her in the middle of the floor, and I've got tables and chairs, and there’s a bowl of water and her food.

And I looked through the window, and I sat by the window and I watched her for an hour and a half, trying to find the water bowl.

She was really lost. And that's when I knew. And she was just hanging on for me.

But, I kind of had a word with her, and said, “Darling, I've got to go and see Kate. So, you've got to go. And I want you to go”.

So we took her in, that day.

And there's her beautiful little old frail body, and she got the injection, and the vet was so beautiful.

She said to me, “Do you want... we can keep Elly and cremate her, and send you the ashes?”

The whole idea of sending her body away was completely out of the question.

No! She’s my dog.

And I took her little cold body that was so limp, and wrapped it in a towel, and brought her home, and laid her out on the table.

And got her brush, and groomed her, anointed her with oil. And cleaned her, bathed her, clipped her nails, made her look as pretty as possible.

Wiped her eyes. And talking to her the whole time. Of course Kate Bush music

And then I thought, okay what do we do now? I’m not just going to put you in the dirt.

I had a shoebox - because she was just so small.

And then I had a beautiful piece of Cambodian silk, that I’d brought back from Cambodia years before -

rich orange, gold, red - and lined this shoebox with it and laid her in that beautiful box.

Flowers of the season, daffodils, calendula, jonquils, and then I folded the silk over and the lid came down on the box.

And we drove out to Castlemaine where we used to live, and under a beautiful tree there, where other pets were buried.

I carved her a beautiful headstone and buried her.

God she smelled beautiful and I anointed her with scented oils as well, frankincense as well.

Do you know, there was nothing hideous or awful or sad about it.

I cried a little bit but I think the process of anointing her body, and burying her was kind of an elixir against shocking grief.

It was part of a process that took me into a place of understanding. And one that, I am a gardener, she was buried, she’d gone to earth, so beautifully safe and warm in the silk,

She’d gone to earth... I don't know. I don't know... I think something about anointing that body and treating it the way I did, made me more in that experience of decomposition and death and dying.

Honestly it was just the most beautiful, heavenly thing.

And two weeks later I got on the plane and flew to London and saw Kate, who was no longer the 20 year old waif in leotards, but this big busty woman in a caftan with her now-grown son and bare feet, completely earthed,

and her arms stretched out, like an Earth mother.

And I just thought this is complete, this whole thing is complete.

And do you know what I did after that? And after that I got on a plane and went back to Cypress and I went back to that tree, and sat there with a book in my lap and a photo of Elly.

(cries)

(Whispered) Sorry

You know what? When I buried her, it was like she was buried in me, and there was no separation. There was no separation.

It was wonderful.

Gursel had a new poodle pup when we met, and they’d been together just a few weeks.

Little Scout sat in his lap, the whole time, listening quietly. Already their bond was true.

So, this is the second time around with a dog, and there are little things that you forget, that come back to you when you've got a little dog in your life… the sounds and the familiarity.

Like for instance, if you’re snuggling up on a couch and the dog jumps up on the couch, there's a moment where they'll make themselves comfortable, they might make a couple of turns, and then, once they’re comfortable

and they’ll give you all their weight, and perhaps the chin’s on your arm, there’s this exhale - there’s this beautiful little puff - hah - of contentment.

And I, I get it. You know. That’s the thing.

And those little, beautiful little moments that I've been living without for a while. I remember all those little things... Just that little puff of air.

Thank you, Gursel, for asking me to help tell about Elly. Wishing you and Scout many happy years.

Seja’s song for Elly will play in a few moments, but as this is the final episode of season 2 of Oh My Dog, I thought I’d encourage you to take a look at our website!

You’ll find lots of dog photos, transcripts of all the episodes, plus links to up to date HIV information.

If you’re in a position to support us financially to help make more episodes, you can also do that there.

If you’re not, but you like what you hear, please tell your friends to listen or give us a shout out on social media.

Oh My Dog is written and produced by me, Michelle Ransom-Hughes, for Alongside Radio

Sound design, music, and mixing throughout seasons one and two have been by the incomparable Seja Vogel.Thank you, Seja.

And thanks to Mish and Leigh Armstrong, Dylan, Simon, Rebecca Armstrong and Ali Mobbs.

And thank you, so much, for listening.

SONG: Song for Elly (written and performed by Seja Vogel)