Kennett pays tribute to pooches
Wednesday 1 November 2000
Jeff Kennett's passion for pooches has prompted the former
Victorian premier to compile a collection of more than 90 of
his favorite dog poems.
Dog Lovers' Poems, a collection of prose and verse, was launched
by Mr Kennett today - more than a decade after he read out his first
canine caper during an eight-week stint on Melbourne Radio 3AW
in 1989.
"I read it on air and the response was quite electric and for the rest
of the eight weeks we had poems coming in, etc," Mr Kennett told
the station today.
"I said at the end of it, one day I will publish this collection of poems
that I have, or I have received."
He said his publishing "juices" were stirred by a woman who earlier
this year told him that her dogs were the only thing that had stopped
her from taking her own life on several occasions.
Mr Kennett, who is chairman of a national depression initiative, said
he went home, found the ageing box of listeners' dog poems in his garage
and set his son, Angus, the task of typing them up.
The rest is history.
The book is, in part, a tribute to his love for his own four-legged friends.
His current dogs are two Hungarian vizslas called Heidi and Ruby, who
he said were the most intelligent dogs he had ever had.
"Dogs to me are wonderfully personable. They have very different characters.
"Dogs don't talk to you, they just return affection - whereas so many other
parts of life are about conversation, etc."
He also told of the sadness he felt when several of his previous
"wonderfully
big friends", which included great danes, had to be put down "before their
use by date".
"You make a conscious decision in the interests of your friend and then
you've
got to take the friend to a place where his or her life is going to be
extinguished,"
he said.
"That is a very, very emotional moment."
He also admitted that if he were a dog, he would probably be great dane
like,
while his former treasurer Alan Stockdale would have been a terrier.
- AAP
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