Many readers will be saddened to learn of the death of retired veterinary surgeon Miss Lola Breeze.

Our first boxer dog in the late Fifties was one of her original clients and she subsequently looked after other boxers and Siberian huskies with loving care.

Our present vet described Lola as an instinctive vet not just one with book learning.

She had the advantage of breeding, exhibiting and working her German shepherd dogs, pomeranians and Shetland sheepdogs and was also a keen horsewoman.

She was the veterinary surgeon to Southern Counties Canine Society for many years, especially in the Hove Park days and was made an honorary life member.

Her one-woman practice in Kingston, near Lewes, was always busy and she was on call at any time.

My wife and I became good friends with her and stayed with her in her large Victorian house on the edge of the New Forest, where she had a positive menagerie of rescued animals of all sorts, plus New Forest ponies, many of whom would come up to the fences to "talk" to passers-by.

On one occasion she heard screams from the front of the house and found a family with children in a near-state of panic, shouting: "Your Rottweiler tried to attack us."

"I don't think so," replied Lola.

"Yes it did," they screamed.

"But I don't have a Rottweiler," said Lola.

"Yes you do and there it is!" It was a rescued Nubian goat which was on the look-out for a sandwich.

As the evening darkened, we would sit in the huge bay window and watch badgers feed on eggs and other foods left out for them.

Lola's other love was music and, on retirement, she took clarinet and piano lessons which she somehow fitted in with all her other commitments.

She was a quiet, almost shy person, until she got to know you after which roars of laughter would issue forth from her consulting room while examining her patients.

The veterinary profession, animals and music have lost a good friend.

-Les Crawley, Brighton