We got our first dog in 2013 followed closely by our second the following year. Our first was a frenchie named Dotty, a feisty little bitch who was scared of nothing and no one. Our second, a male English bulldog called Bentley (but more affectionately known as Dickhead because he was and remains a complete dick!) was much less brave. One of the simple pleasures in my life was setting off with my dogs and a bottle of water and just seeing where we ended up. Miles of countryside and woodland, urban areas and parks making lots of friends along the way. So when my legs began to fail it was a really hard pill to swallow. I didn’t have the freedom I once had, the ability to immerse myself in nature, take in the fresh air… and without putting the mileage in I could look forward to getting fucking fat. Great.

So about 3 years ago a friend of mine calls me up umm-ing and ahh-ing and falling over her words being really bloody annoying so I said “will you just fucking spit it out?!” 🤣 turns out her neighbour had popped his clogs leaving his young son with a mobility scooter to sell. Hey-presto £200 later I was its new “proud” owner. Now all I had to do was swallow my pride and go out on it… pride is something you very rarely get to keep when you have MS, it takes that along with your dignity, most of your abilities as an adult, your social life, friends and of course your filter! I’m sure there are many MSers out there who are much more demure and self-controlled than I am but where’s the fun in that?! Anyway, I knew if I couldn’t walk my doggos then I couldn’t keep them/get any more so I HAD to do it. Who knew how liberating it could be riding around on a mobility scooter? It wasn’t long before I stopped caring if people saw me and I just started enjoying myself! Mine was one of the bigger “road legal” scooters meaning I could get a whopping 8mph out of it 😳 not that my now nearly 10 year old bulldog wants any involvement with that, he’s literally like walking a bag of cement and very much more interested in pissing on everything than actually walking.

I found having the scooter had loads more benefits too, I could go to motocross meetings with the husband again and actually get around to watch, and Bentley loves going to MX as he’s a very sociable boy. It does however have its limitations. Having been using it on all manner of terrains and in all weathers for the past 3-ish years I may have got a bit cocky and over confident in the capabilities of my trusty scooter. So we went out for a normal walk on a rare dry day in the autumn and Bentley always had an off-lead runaround on the same bit of grass. This walk was no different, we got to “the” grass and off he went, heading to a far corner and depositing a massive shit so I got my bags ready and headed over to retrieve said deposit, picked it up, and started to reverse out of the corner I was now in. However the ridiculous amount of rain we’d recently had meant that the ground was a little soft. In fact, a lot soft and I ended up beaching myself in the mud, whirring away a large trench while bouncing up and down looking like a demented idiot while trying futilely to get enough purchase in the mud to get myself out. FUCK IT!! I was stuck. Luckily Bentley is a good boy, had Dotty still been with us at this point she’d have fucked off to find a new mum! Bentley on the other hand had come back to me to have his lead reattached 💙 I love “walking” in the middle of the day, it’s quieter, however the downside of this is that there are bugger all people about to rescue you when get yourself stupidly stuck! So there was only one thing for it, I’d have to call the Fire Brigade. For fucks sake!! The embarrassment! I had multiple problems with this, using resources that I don’t actually need (ie I’m not on fire so you know…) which in turn costs money (I know I pay my council tax and have for many years but even so) plus it draws attention to me and I’m not one to make a fuss – I mean what if they had the lights and sirens on?! I’d be fucking horrified!! Luckily it wasn’t like that, I did get a proper fire engine packed with strapping lads in uniform (well hello there!) but they were quiet and pushed me out of the quagmire I’d gotten myself into without fuss or noise. All very nice and had a nice little joke about it 🙄 plus Bentley got some fusses so he was happy. It was still mortifying though and the worst bit about it all? As they went to drive off one of them shouted out the window that for data gathering they needed my AGE!! Like it hadn’t been embarrassing enough I had to disclose that I was 40!! FML 🤦🏻‍♀️