Jane Duckworth Biography

Animalia: Life with animals

From a young age I was always interested in animals, wanting to find out about them and always asking my parents for a new pet. A green budgie came first then later still a tortise that our family of eight had for many years. Two guinea pigs were a hit to begin with then were sent back when none of us kids were keen to clean the cage!

By the time I was nine we got a black Labrador cross that we named Blackie. He disappeared one day and was reclaimed from the pound. The next time we weren’t so lucky. There mustn’t have been a id tag and certainly no microchipping in those days.

A cat was found at our primary school so I took her home to look after until an owner was found. Needless to say Puddles, known as Puss, never did leave, dying at age 16.

I wanted a dog of my own to take to the local dog obedience club but was told to wait until I became a teenager, then I could be responsible for its care. Just before I turned 13 a mongrel dog up the street had puppies, so the Border collie became a little white scruffy with a black patch over each eye.

Mandy blitzed them at dog obedience, winning her first club competition at age six months. Always very clever and with an excellent temperament, Mandy was faultless with family, friends and visitors alike.

Over the years there have been many companion animals, mainly cats, dogs and horses but I still have a soft spot for guinea pigs, who are marvellous little characters.

Mandy from the local neighbourhood, Missy from a garage sale, Jackson from the Blue Cross, Kelly from the Lost Dogs’ Home, Heidi the Min Schnauzer from a registered breeder and my current companion, Harry from Melbourne Dog Rescue all impacted on my life.

Then there were the ponies and horses. I waited till I was sixteen to get my first equine friend; his name being Sparky. Then there was Topper, Ramah and Jess. A number of happy years at pony club followed. After a long period without horses where I settled into my new job as a teacher-librarian, married once, divorced and married again, it was time to start afresh in the horsey community.

I purchased red bay Rio Bravo a Quarter horse cross who was very reliable and rather beautiful. Older and with a damaged hoof, he was a low cost purchase who was never lame and got fat and shiny on the most basic feed. He died of old age when he was 22 years old.

Next arrival was a baby human, then another; Rio passing away when my eldest was aged three.

The first born had her introductory lesson at Yarramalong Waler Stud and Riding School at Muckleford where I met Peter and Pat Fisher, the president of the now defunct National League for the Protection of Horses. He and his wife Pat were inspirational as they had personally rescued so many animals, including Cyclops the one-eyed cat. They were also trying to conserve the Australian Waler Horse breed. My daughter had a number of lessons there and was ready for pony club.

I went and had a look at the local pony clubs near my suburban home in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, so excited that my daughters would hopefully be members one day. The first joined the club’s Riders Without Horses program age eight, then we leased a cranky but safe old pony called Candy so full membership and competitions began.

Since then, there’s been Chelsea, a doe-faced chestnut who never put a foot wrong; Black Ice, alias Jack, who was an old Thoroughbred gentleman and Chocolate Royale (Elle) and Nevada the rejects from the country saleyard.

My youngest daughter had her turn riding Candy and then there was Taffy, just like his name a little taffy-coloured pony with a flowing mane and tail.

Writing career

I had always been interested in writing, originally hoping to be a journalist but then I would have liked to be a vet too. During HSC I had interviews at The Age and The Sun, as it was called then, but my knowledge of current affairs wasn’t crash hot.

I did a bit of writing here and there as I went through university to do my Bachelor of Education (Librarianship). I had various very minor publishing credits, including writing book reviews for the School Library Support Service; later the journal Viewpoints: On Books For Young Adults; a piece in the Herald Sun, genealogy journals and various magazines, for instance, Animals Today. I contributed to the School Library Association of Victoria publication Back to Books: Fiction for Secondary School Teacher-Librarians, in 1999.

Much later in life I enrolled in a Diploma Arts (Professional Writing and Editing) at Box Hill Institute of TAFE in 1995. I completed the two year course over four years, starting as a hobby when my first born was a year old.

Children’s stories, short stories, articles and the beginning of a novel were produced (but not published). Eventually I needed a topic for my non-fiction book project in the last year of the course. Some inspiration soon came.  After viewing a UK produced tv documentary entitled They shoot horses, don’t they? around 1996 I was left feeling quite shocked as it exposed the darker side of horse racing in the UK. Horses were depicted as disposal commodities that were gradually culled from the industry from the moment they were born. I began to wonder what the situation was like in the Australian racing industry.

I had unknowingly started on a five year journey of research, writing and ultimately self-publishing my own book on the treatment of horses in Australia. The basis of my original concern quickly widened to include issues related to recreational horses, competition horses, brumbies and so on.

In 1997 I discovered Project Hope Horse Rescue, made contact with president Nicky Fanning so that she could provide information for my book and was invited to spent a day on the road with her, investigating reports of neglected and abused horses.

As they say, the rest is history. This animal welfare organisation had been operating since 1973 are were obviously making a real difference, to both horses requiring immediate help and the general public that needed a point of contact to gain knowledge about responsible horse care.

I became a paid up member, eventually offered to be a general committee member in 2000 (?) and spent a year as vice president in 2005. I retired and became a passive member in 2006. The charity is now called Project Hope Horse Welfare Victoria, having gone from strength to strength in recent years.

Back to my writing journey; in 2000 I had an educational reader accepted by Macmillan Education. It was a real buzz to have my own little book published, Snow Rescue. Then I teamed up with one of my sisters, Lisa Robins, who is an environmental scientist.

Lisa and I wrote The Story of Agroforestry in Australia, part of the The Workboot Series that was created for the Kondinin Group, Australia’s largest farmers’ co-operative. We were delighted when the book was shorted listed in the top four of the Primary Section of the The Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing of the Australian Book Industry Awards of 2005.

I felt like my writing career was starting to advance so I kept going. I wrote They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The Treatment of Horses in Australia over a five year period. But after some positive comments from prospective publishers it became clear that the manuscript would only continue to be rejected. I made the decision to self-publish.

The completed first print run was delivered in 2002. Various avenues were used to publicise and subsequently sell the books, but not through retail bookshops as 40% of the Recommended Retail Price must be given to them in return. I couldn’t afford this loss as I was still only hoping to break even once the whole project was completed.

It was a battle to publicise my book but with some favourable reviews the print run eventually sold out. The idea of starting a companion volume on dog welfare in Australia had been nudging me for a while but I put this aside as the thought of doing all this all again was a little too crazy, particularly when it wasn’t even an economically smart thing to do.

As it happened, I kept seeing thought-provoking articles in the various newspapers and on the internet so couldn’t help myself but cut them out or printed them off, filing the information away for some reason. Then I had the urge to start writing again, but could have got stuck into my family history, instead decided to start a whole new animal welfare book, but this time focusing on dogs.

Not Every Dog Has His Day: The Treatment of Dogs in Australia will be published in early July 2009 after a six or seven year span of sporadic attempts to get it researched, written, edited and designed. I am proud to say that it will be the first book of its type that has been published in Australia. I hope it provides balanced views on the various issues but as they say in the commercial, ‘I’m for dogs’ so maybe it’s a little biased.

Cheers

Jane

28 May 2009

Harry and Toby at home