With the help of a whip-around by his workmates, within three weeks he was on a boat to Melbourne as a £10 Pom – Australia’s assisted migration program. So, it’s perhaps not extraordinary that in 1952, when his girlfriend of the time migrated to Australia, Dolph decided to follow her. It’s just one of a series of exploits in Dolph’s life, from his childhood years training monkeys and caring for animals in his dad’s pet business, to talking to the queen (incidentally born the same year as him) during her tour of the Ronson lighter factory he worked in after the war. Whether or not having survived that chicken is what gave Dolph the robust health to make it into his 90s he’s not sure, but it makes a good story. He says smuggling food in this way, with the parachute harness holding it in place, was common as troops often had no food or line of communication when dropped into hostile territory. He did a series of missions into Europe and the Middle East, and recalls sticking a whole roast chicken into his battle dress before making a drop into Palestine, and living on it for the next four days. He recalled his mother being able to hear the plane motors coming far in the distance before a raid.Īt the earliest opportunity, 17¼, having been turned down by the air force, Dolph signed up as an army paratrooper, which he was pleased still meant taking to the skies. “It was like anything else, it’s what you were used to and you did it because that was what everyone did …” “We grew up with the bombing, so it (the air raid shelter) didn’t really worry us,” Dolph said. Many Anderson shelters – steel or iron panels formed into a semi-circle and dug into families’ gardens – survived the worst of German bombing that destroyed homes and neighbourhoods, and are still intact today. “We had an Anderson shelter in the garden and it became like a second home,” Dolph said, explaining he and his siblings went there each day after school, and when the air raid sirens wailed. Wife Mary Anne said Dolph particularly missed his Monday social get-togethers through Nerang’s Liberty Community Connect, and was far less accepting of today’s restrictions than those he faced as a kid during the war. Moss said a lot of people failed to think through buying a lockdown puppy and are now struggling to keep up financially or experiencing behavioural problems due to a lack of training and socialisation.Īnd, as dogs tend to lose their value the older they get, many have been sold online multiple times before arriving at the charity’s door, leading to a range of issues including separation anxiety and confusion, Moss warned.DOLPH Baker remembers clearly long hours in the little air raid shelter at his home in London.ĭolph, now 93 and calling Helensvale home, said Covid-19 restrictions reminded him of those days of not being able to get out, be with friends and do as you wanted. But sometimes you call them and they say they sold the dog some time back, or the number doesn’t work.” “When a dog warden takes a dog, they will scan a microchip and the person registered on the chip can claim the dog back. “Dog wardens have been getting calls from vets who say a member of the public has said they found a stray, but often it’s by people who can’t be bothered to wait for rescue charities to help or are embarrassed about handing the dog in. Ira Moss, the founder of the charity All Dogs Matter, told the Independent: “We have noticed in the past couple of weeks an increase in dogs coming in, and we believe that 90% of the time people have been pressured to sell the dogs first rather than bring them into the charities. Shelters and charities are reporting that owners who no longer want their pets are attempting to sell them online via websites such as Gumtree and Pets4Homes in an attempt to recoup what they paid for the dog. They often have a higher incidence of behavioural and health problems and are thus more difficult to rehome. Many of these pets were bought online and their true origins and medical issues were not disclosed.
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