{"id":419439,"date":"2026-04-27T05:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419439\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T05:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:18:10","slug":"chamber-choir-ireland-ceo-majella-hollywood-on-her-rescue-dog-sadie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/419439\/","title":{"rendered":"Chamber Choir Ireland CEO Majella Hollywood on her rescue dog Sadie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Chamber Choir Ireland CEO on her rescue dog Sadie, who doesn\u2019t like to be left on her own but has become a sort of therapy dog at the National Concert Hall\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Majella Hollywood and her rescue dog Sadie<\/p>\n

Sadie had only two weeks before she was put down when I rescued her in February 2023. I\u2019d done some fostering before for Dogs in Distress and when I saw Sadie go up online, I decided to help her. She needed a good bit of TLC, naturally, but she was very quiet and gentle.<\/p>\n

There was a nervousness about her, but she settled fairly quickly and when I was asked to send on some photos of her because someone was interested in actually adopting her, I said no, because I already knew I wanted to keep her myself.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s six or seven years old now and she\u2019s a Labrador cross. Crossed with what? Well, that\u2019s hard to tell, but she\u2019s a bit smaller than a regular Labrador, and she has very interesting \u2013 and expressive \u2013 ears!<\/p>\n

I grew up with Labradors; Goldie arrived when I was about three, and I was 17 or 18 when she died. Then my brother had a black Labrador called Bruno. He was a very attentive dog, and was brilliant with my mum who was a stroke patient at the time; Bruno always had a really lovely presence around her.<\/p>\n

\"Majella<\/p>\n

Majella Hollywood, CEO Chamber Choir Ireland, with her rescue dog Sadie. Photo: Steve Humphreys<\/p>\n

Sadie is also a calm dog, but when she arrived three years ago her separation anxiety issues meant that if I left her alone for even a short time, the kitchen bin would be emptied and there\u2019d be rubbish all over the place. There\u2019s none of that any more; when I leave her now she knows that I\u2019m coming back.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s still not keen being parted from me, though. If I have to pop out for milk, say I can\u2019t bring Sadie with me, left on her own for those few minutes she\u2019d be jumping all over the car, turning on lights and hitting all kinds of switches until I was back again!<\/p>\n

Sadie helps me to live a better life. Walking her in the morning and again in the evening time adds punctuation to the day. Those walks clear my head before my working schedule begins and then, no matter what kind of day I\u2019ve had, there\u2019s always that evening walk to look forward to.<\/p>\n

She has her own bed in my bedroom, and although she always starts off up on my bed, when I turn out the light she jumps down and gets into her own. At weekends, if I sleep a bit longer, she\u2019ll leap up and potter along to the top of the bed to see what on earth\u2019s going on \u2013 am I awake or not?<\/p>\n

My Chamber Choir office is in the National Concert Hall and when I go in two days every week, Sadie comes too. It\u2019s so lovely having her there \u2013 curled up in her bed in my office. Mind you, she\u2019s not the only dog in the building. The Concert Hall staff just love Sadie \u2013 and she loves them. Really, she\u2019s like a therapy dog. <\/p>\n

Chamber Choir Ireland\u2019s nationwide concert tour, \u2018Servant of Servants, Patron of the Arts\u2019, begins on May 1, see chamberchoirireland.com<\/p>\n

As told to Roslyn Dee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chamber Choir Ireland CEO on her rescue dog Sadie, who doesn\u2019t like to be left on her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,6361,43,93240],"class_list":["post-419439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-life-magazine","tag-news","tag-roslyn-dee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}