My human occasionally adopts antique bears. This dear little Alpha Farnell bear recently arrived.

After sharing her arrival on my Facebook page lots of names were suggested. We chose ‘Nellie’, as it sort of derives from the end bit of ‘Farnell’ and as my human forgets our names sometimes, she should be able to remember Nellie.

Nellie wasn’t particularly dirty but we always like to freshen up new arrivals. Nellie is a 1960s bear and would have been stuffed with kapok, so we couldn’t put her in the bear jacuzzi (the word we bears call the washing machine. Nellie required surface washing to avoid wetting the kapok stuffing.

My human added a little clarifying human shampoo to some water and whipped it up into lots of bubbles. We then proceeded to gently dab Nellies fur with the bubbles. It can also be a good idea to give an old bear a brush with a gentle toothbrush before the washing process to remove and dust and grime, but Nellie was already quite clean so we didn’t brush her first.

Once Nellie had been dabbed all over with the bubbles it was time to soak the detergent off her fur.

We did this using high quality ‘blue roll’ which my human uses in the kitchen instead of kitchen towel as it works better. We knew that the blue roll dye wouldn’t come out as we have used it on spills on a light coloured wool carpet, but it is probably best to use white kitchen towel if you aren’t sure, or a towel.

After drying Nellie off we dabbed her again with clear water, rinsing the cloth to remove any shampoo.

She was ‘rinsed’ and dried off a couple of times, any shampoo left behind would make her sticky. Nellie didn’t mind as she didn’t want to be a ‘sticky’ bear!

The 3rd and final rinse had a dash of gentle fabric softener added to condition her fur. We aren’t sure what Nellie’s fur is made of but don’t think it is mohair.

The end result was Nellie wrapped up in a pink spotty towel, she looked like she had just been swimming (something us bears must not do!)

I took Nellie upstairs to dry her fur using a hairdryer.

In between blowing her with warm air I brushed her fur.

Nellie’s nose was unravelling so with a bit of help from my human I performed some nose surgery. It was quite hard getting the needle through her snout which is stuffed quite firmly.

Nellie now all fluffly with her lovely little blue ears.

I had a little surprise for her, a little dress that was handmade for a doll that my human bought from an Etsy shop seller ‘dollytot’.

Nellie was absolutely delighted; the dress fitted her perfectly and will protect her 70 year old fur.

Nellie went on to spend the evening sat on the radiator to make sure that she really is dry.

My human was very pleased with how little Nellie turned out. Apparently she was made as a ‘pram toy’ and bears like her were fastened to prams with ribbon in the 1950s/1960s.

Horace the Alresford Bear 1/12/2025