I was aged 14 and a student at Manchester High School when I first became fascinated by the field of rehabilitation. By the Spring of 1954 I was armed with a thirst for knowledge, an appreciation for excellence, the requisite academic credentials and a ration book when I set out for St. Thomas’ Hospital School of Physiotherapy in London.

On qualifying in 1957, I accepted a job working in the Department of Physical Medicine at St. Thomas’s. The opportunity of a lifetime occurred when I was offered work on the unit headed by Dr. James Cyriax, a man whose work I greatly admired.

In 1960, Dr. Cyriax encouraged me to respond to the request of Dr. Lennart Hult to go to the university town of Umeå in northern Sweden. My task was to teach the work of physiotherapists and to set up a treatment unit. By 1962, I had set up 2 similar units in the towns of Borås and Jönköping before I returned to England intending to set up a private practice with a colleague.

It was hard to settle down and I longed to live in bigger spaces. In 1963, encouraged by Dr. Cyriax, I sailed on a cargo boat from Manchester docks to establish the first hospital-based physiotherapy department and to further my career in the city of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. Such plans were very quickly derailed by a 16-hand golden palomino horse provided to me for a trail ride. The young man who had bred and trained him proved to be a kindred spirit. A year later we were married.

In 1968, my husband and I, as partners, became sole proprietors of Corvallis Angus Farms, an enterprise developed over several years by Vernon and his family. For the next 20 years we devoted our lives to the pure-bred Angus business. We travelled extensively over the plains and mountains of North America, sometimes in small planes tossed around like corks in vigorous wind currents. We entertained visitors from around the world and sold cattle into several states and countries. Our son Matthew developed his own herd of pure bred cattle from the Heifer Calf which we gave him the day he was born. The cattle paid for his university education and his herd remained intact on the day he graduated.

In 1989, we decided to hold a dispersal sale and commit our herd to a new, vigorous and enterprising generation of Angus breeders. We are thrilled that our lifetime’s work will continue albeit in the capable hands of others. During my lifetime, I have realised that the principles of nurture and nutrition apply in the same way to plants and animals as they do to humans. Injured animals respond to rehabilitation, often with the same clear appreciation as people. Above all, I have embraced the reality that life is what is happening while you are planning something else.