Eileen Riley - Secrets of a Pet Nanny: A Journey from the White House to the Dog House

First published 2013 by

Elliott and Thompson Limited

27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX

www.eandtbooks.com

ePUB: 978-1-909653-23-8

MOBI: 978-1-909653-24-5

Text Eileen Riley 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Some names and other details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals, both humans and dogs.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Jacket design: Anna Morrison

Typesetting: MacGuru Ltd

Illustrations: Jay French Studios

For my parents, James and Frances Riley.
Thank you for letting me go, but you knew I never really left.

Its 5:30 in the morning and I am standing amidst the chaos of my newly decorated kitchen, eyeing the jumble of food and crockery scattered across the floor, considering all the suspects before me like Miss Marple. The fat one in the corner may have that Who me? I just got here look on her face, but Im not buying it. Shes got plenty of form. The skinny one looks fairly innocent, until you notice that strand of last nights pasta hanging out the side of his mouth. Hes chewing, slowly, hoping to get rid of the evidence without drawing any attention to himself. Its not working. Meanwhile, the enormous brown one with his back to me is studiously contemplating the cookbooks, apparently trying to decide if hes a Delia or a Jamie fan. Much of this stuff used to be up on the counter, far too high for his companions to have reached by themselves.

No one moves. They continue ignoring me, until the creaky grande dame, who sleeps outside my bedroom door, finally makes her way down the stairs and around the corner to join us. She shakes her head, gives me a Teenagers, what do you expect? look, plops down, and nudges her bowl forward to remind me that its never too early for breakfast. And so begins another bewildering day in the life of a Pet Nanny.

A Pet Nanny?

Yes, a nanny. For pets. Well, for dogs mostly. Were here when their owners cant be. Or, to be more accurate, they are here when their owners are elsewhere, usually somewhere either very sunny or very snowy. Why, you might ask, would someone who spent four years at university earning a degree in Anthropology, another two studying international relations at graduate school, and ten years building a promising career as an international diplomat, want to devote their life to caring for other peoples dogs? This was certainly not what my career advisors had in mind.

I come from New York City not Manhattan, of course, but fairly close to it. Growing up in such a multicultural place can make you go one of two ways: you either enjoy seeing hyphenated American life (as in Irish-American, Italian-American, Martian-American) or you want to go out and see the real thing. I enjoyed the St Patricks Day parade down Fifth Avenue, in the days when they still painted the white line down the middle green, but I really wanted to know what the parade in Dublin would be like. Chinatown was great, but I suspected that Hong Kong was better. Michelangelos Piet looked beautiful at the Vatican Pavilion in the Worlds Fair, but how did it look in St Peters in Rome? You get the idea. As you can imagine, I was enormously difficult to live with.

Until, that is, Jimmy Carter decided that he really did need me in his diplomatic corps and so, after some training at the State Department and some liaising with the White House, much to my delight and everyone elses relief, I was off to explore the world. I became an American diplomat and served in Cameroon, Washington and Papua New Guinea. I trudged through the jungle with astronaut John Glenn and helped boxing legend Muhammad Ali in his search for warm water ports. I fled mutineering tuna fishermen in the South China Sea and snakes in an African shower, and I greeted American warships putting into harbour at dawn and missionary planes landing on rock-strewn fields at night. My diplomatic passport brought me respectful nods from customs agents and my security was assured day and night by the United States Marines.

Eventually I ended up in London. Disembarking at Heathrow during the dying days of the Reagan administration, I was headed for a wonderful two-year posting. A busy embassy in a major European capital perfectly balanced out my earlier posts in more remote regions. I was now perfectly positioned to clear the glass ceiling. My next station would be a senior job in some hot, humid, totally unpleasant little backwater that was hard to pronounce. My name might even end up on the door to the Ambassadors office.

I had high expectations for London, after a central casting stint in Washington. Just a few months earlier, I was tapped to work with the White House on special projects down the hall from the Oval Office. Suddenly I was dropping phrases like My counterpart at the White House and I think and I cant make the 2 oclock meeting, Ill be over at the White House.

Much as I had enjoyed opportunities to work in the White House, I was thrilled to have crossed the Atlantic. Who wouldnt want to be young and single and living in London, the home of Big Ben and the Beatles; red double-decker buses and black cabs; castles and cathedrals; fish and chips and country pubs; Wimbledon tennis and cricket.

I spent the next few months solving key problems, like helping a Florida high school marching band that had lost both their money and plane tickets find their way safely home. When senior citizens accidentally lost track of their tour groups, I was happy to help them reconnect. It was also my job to educate bewildered tourists on the meaning of tea time and how it affected pub-opening hours. I loved them all; even the woman searching for a church her friend had recommended, the name and address of which she had forgotten, but it began with Saint.

So, how exactly did I start off a lowly American diplomat and wind up an exalted English Pet Nanny? Thats a very good question, one that I ask myself quite a lot. Sometimes I think about it when staring at the chewed edges of the antique silk rug that Great-Granddad brought back from China, or when looking for the frozen chicken that I was sure I had left defrosting in the kitchen, or when wondering if my brand new shoes are still wearable with only one heel. Or when shampooing the carpet, yet again.

Back then I had a great career, no student loans to pay off, a stable employer, no healthcare deductibles and a guaranteed civil service retirement plan. It never occurred to me that my wonderful position with the State Department was the second best job in town. Yet I jettisoned the lot after a chance meeting at a party with a charming journalist named Tom Arms.

I became determined to stay in London, a city we both adored, and I began to realise that there was more to life than the State Department. There were other things I wanted to do, like get married and have a family without having to raise children all over the world. And I wanted a dog.

The final step in my career transformation was brought about by my beloved husband Tom, who is the leader of our local Cub Scout pack. One evening he came home from knottying and fire-starting and said, I told Johnny that you would be a Pet Nanny. Thats okay, isnt it? Well, its hard to listen too closely to anything a large, bald, one-eyed man in a giant Cub Scout uniform is saying but, and I say this from personal experience, that can be a mistake. It turns out that Toms fellow Scouter is married to Serena, who runs a little business called, appropriately enough, Pet Nanny. She matches up people who need their furry friends cared for with people who would be happy to have a guest canine come and live in their home as part of the family. Being the persuasive sort of person she is, Serena has talked just about every dog lover even remotely connected with Scouting into becoming a Pet Nanny. The latest recruit, apparently, was me.