Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2013-10-07 13:19:44 - Graham Ellis
Lisa and Graham [Ellis], Gypsy and Billy. Gypsy is a lurcher - a Staffie / Greyhound crossbreed (we think) and Billy is a Greyhound - don't know if he's totally purebred. Both came to us as "rescue"s - Gypsy about 4 years ago from the Dog's Trust in Newbury, and Billy from Bristol DAWG (Dog Action Welfare Group) who specialise in Greyhound and greyhound cross rehoming. Although many, many greyhounds have to be rehomed after they are retired or rejected from the world of greyhound racing, especially from Ireland, our two have never been formal racers and indeed Billy came to us as a youngish dog, but with an already-eventful set of life experiences.
We live in Melksham, Wiltshire - in a big old semidetatched house (a listed building!) on the outskirts of town, with a public footpath running to one side that leads out to fields that you'll see in many of our pictures. We have a reasonable sized back garden too - but not one that's big enough for Billy to get up to full speed. Lisa has a "home office" and is based there as the backroom part of our business which is...
I'm an IT trainer. I run niche courses all around the UK and sometimes beyond about half the time, and the other half of the time people come to us for training. From a room at home, we've expanded to our own training centre about a kilometre up the road, where we have five guest bedrooms. Initially for delegates, we expanded to take other guests visiting the town to work at other companies, then to take people visiting friends and relatives in the town, and finally to accept general leisure bookings. We're very popular for people who want a nice room, a quiet base and a healthy breakfast. No bar, no cooked breakfast, no children. But we do take dogs ...
OK... a lot of people used to come to Melsham to take our courses by train, but then the schedule was changed and that blew a hole in what we could offer. I felt the case hadn't been fully looked at, so set up a campaign to get it looked at, analysed, put right and kept right. We're on step 3 of 4 of that.
And people like what we were doing on the train stuff, and have asked me to get involved in the Chamber of Commerce, where I'm President at the moment, and on the community operations board for the new council campus in the town. We've opened a little museum for Melksham (filling another void) and cafe, and we encourage visitors any afternoon. Come in the morning, we won;'t turn you away.