WATERLOO A Waterloo Region dog walking and training company is working to settle separation anxiety for our four-legged friends as many workers pivot back to regular office hours. With COVID-19 pandemic restrictions loosening, Clair Guistini says Packlife Dog Retreat has more than doubled its business in the past two months. Booming, booming, it s absolutely booming, said Guistini, the company s pack leader, adding more residents returning to regular work schedules or the office is driving business. We re trying to work our schedule around that to help them because not all people can drop off between 9 and 5, she said. But the return to more regular work schedules and the office means more pooches at home alone through the day.
Catherine Carswell IN May 1908 The Times published a court report on a landmark trial, “a wife’s suit for the nullity of marriage on the ground that at the time of marriage the husband was insane and incapable of contracting marriage.” The wife in question would go on to become one of Scotland’s most significant, though relatively under-appreciated writers, one of the few women who made a mark in the 20th century Scottish renaissance, Catherine Carswell. Carswell would write Open The Door, a ground-breaking and highly-autobiographical novel about a young woman’s sexual awakening and strivings for independence, pen a controversial, landmark biography of Robert Burns – which so upset Burns’ devotees that one sent her a bullet in the post – and write much-lauded arts criticism for The Glasgow Herald, including a daringly positive review of DH Lawrence’s controversial novel, The Rainbow, that would see her sacked. But back then she was Mrs Catherine Jackson, a Gla
2 She went on to study music at the Schumann Conservatorium in Frankfurt am Main before taking up employment as reviewer and dramatic critic at the Glasgow Times’ sister newspaper, the Glasgow Herald from 1907 until 1915. She also worked as an assistant theatre critic for the Observer. 3 Her first novel, Open the Door, was published in 1920, selling out of all 9000 copies printed and winning a literary prize. She followed it in 1922 with The Camomile. She developed a particular interest in the life and work of Robert Burns, publishing her celebrated The Life of Robert Burns in 1930: her unsentimental account of his life upset many Burns traditionalists, however and she even received hate mail.