Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Dog trainer who trains dogs and dog owners her own way.
On the island
Eight records
Albert W. Ketèlbey and his Concert Orchestra
Well, I've chosen one that takes me back to my college days. It's called Inner Monastery Garden because it's a tune that was played perpetually in the women's hostel at the Harper Adams Agricultural College when I was a girl and took agriculture.
My second record is Charmagne, which of course brings very pleasant memories holiday memories actually because we all played an instrument of some sort or other, and when we used to go to the seaside, as we did every August, we all took our instruments with us.
Victor Silvester and his Ballroom Orchestra
My sister Hazel ran a dancing school at Oxford, and I used to have my riding school during the day and teach everybody riding and join her teaching dancing every night. And when I first met my husband Michael, I taught him to dance, and the tunes that we used were all Victor Silvester as far as possible, and this whispering takes me back to nineteen thirty nine when I met Michael.
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy
I still love it. I think it's a gorgeous thing. I think they had gorgeous voices.
I adore Acabilk, and this is a particularly nice recording, and it's Stranger on the Shore, and as I'm chucked on a desert island, I'm hoping some stranger will turn up on the shore to keep me company.
My Blue Heaven / Bye Bye Blackbird
Walter Donaldson / Ray Henderson
Everybody used to tease me at college because my name maiden name was Blackburn, so they always when I passed used to sing Bye Bye Blackbird. But I think they're two old songs that my generation anyway will will love and I used to strum them out on the piano after rugger matches'cause I used to go to all the rugger matches as I was the only girl with sixty men in college.
The Skye Boat SongFavourite
A little bit hopefully on a desert island that a skyboat might sort of be misrooted and rescue me. It's a lovely song and a very peaceful one. I think I'd be quite happy to stay on an island with that if I could hear it quite often.
My last record, of course, is my signature tune on the series Sweet Talking Rag. I think it's a lovely tune, and the stories I hear from dog owners are very amusing.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:52You're Irish by birth, aren't you?
I'm not Irish, I'm English, but I was born at a boys' college, St Columbus College, near Dublin, Rathfarnam, County Dublin. Well, my father um was headmaster of the school.
Presenter asks
2:20Do you consider yourself a country girl?
Oh, absolutely. My mother used to call me a horny handed member of the soil, because that's where she really thought I belonged, and I do. I've been mad on animals and farming all my life, and I farmed for twenty one years.
Presenter asks
11:11Which was the first important dog in your life?
Oh, the first really important dog was a gorgeous, terribly nervous Alsatian, which was given to me because it was going to be put down. It was so nervous it was no good to anybody, and it had one ear flat and one ear up, which of course it shouldn't have had. And I simply adored it, and I called it Kazan after the book.
Presenter asks
17:23Is every dog trainable?
The keepsakes
The book
Barbara Woodhouse
I'm going to be very conceited. I hope my listeners won't think I am. But I'm going to take my own book, Talking to Animals, because it's an early autobiography which gave me enormous pleasure ... the memories of my early days, and my days right after I married my husband ... would give me the pleasure.
The luxury
my one luxury would be my clock. It's a wonderful humelu clock that belonged to my mother, and it's over a hundred years old, and it's still ticking away on my mantelpiece.
Oh, no, far from it, I'm sorry to say. There are an awful lot of mental dogs in the country to day, because they live such awful lives, full of stress. … But most dogs ninety nine per cent of dogs, I should say, give an early training, and this I emphasise, train them when they come into your home at eight weeks old.
Presenter asks
18:41How do you feel about being pursued by cries of 'Walkies', do you mind?
No, I think it's terribly funny. I got it on the tube yesterday. I my postman left our house this morning, and as he went out, he turned round and laughed and said, Walkies And I think it's very funny. As long as we m amuse people as well as educating them, isn't that the happiest thing of all?
Presenter asks
23:21Barbara, you're one of those people who have a degree of extrasensory perception, aren't you?
Oh yes I know the future very often, and I can always pick people and dogs and things up by telepathy, and the dogs do exactly what I I want.
“I've ridden my cows when they didn't give milk any more. I've gone my daughter's ridden her pony, and I've gone out on a cow. I never see why poor cows should be left to end their days just grazing. Why shouldn't they come out and see the world?”
“An unbroken horse is a very pleasant thing. They have no reason to hate human beings. It's only human beings that make them … Dislike them with their cruelty, with their awful bits, and their bad hands, and their spurs, and everything else, making them do endless things that are not really natural to a horse.”
“I put the blame entirely for all this beastliness about dogs on the owner's shoulders, and I think it's time they pulled their socks up and and got the the the right ideas on how to keep their dog.”
“Dogs adore being laughed with, but hate being laughed at. If you go to a show and laugh at a dog because it looks funny, like some of them do, I think it's very cruel. They got they're very sensitive, but laugh with them, and it's lovely.”