Holly, originally uploaded by DSNelson.
I’ve written quite a few of these posts in the past, it’s becoming quite a regular feature. If you’re are follower of this blog and you’re starting to picture my home as being part-farm then you wouldn’t be far wrong. Like drugs lead the adicted towards bigger and more dangerous highs; pet ownership has lead us towards more demanding pets in the hope of a more intelligent and compassionate companion.
This is Holly, she’s our new puppy pictured here last weekend at the age of 14 weeks old. In Holly I believe we have both of these things.
Rewind a month from now…
Knowing nothing of dog ownership or even where to start we visited a nearby Dog Superstore because I figured it would give me an opportunity to assess a few different breeds in one place. Before then I hadn’t realised the prices attached to pedigree dogs and after picking myself back up from the floor having glipsed the £700 marked on the door of an adorable Beagle pup I looked around to see a chain of cells containing baby dogs, all too small to be separated from their mothers, many held in solitary confinement on floors matted with sawdust. I could never bring myself to support such a trade and so after switching off my protective instincts I walked away from Beagle-pup to continue my research. If only it was that easy, I still feel guilty now..
Having rescued both our cats we looked at the rescue option. Rescue puppies are quite rare and I was unsure about getting a full-sized dog as this would make integration with our cats more difficult and risky. We visited two local rescue shelters, which both had the “usual suspect” breeds that seem to find themselves in rescues around here. For some their crime was obvious, bad tempers enough to put off even the most hardcore dog lover but for others it was clearly a simple case of bad luck. We also regularly checked an online service called “Dogs Blog” which, unsurprisingly, is a blog that posts of new arrivals at rescues around the country. I was here that we found Holly and her brother and sister.
Holly was given to the RSPCA by the owner of her parents who had some success rehoming her litter siblings but they struggled with the last three. Carolynne spotted her immediately on posting and contacted the RSPCA to declare our interest and a couple of days later we visited the foster family in Timperley to view them.
The 3 were all clearly well socialised. The foster family already have 4 dogs of their own and with the 3 pups made 7 dogs playing together in their ample garden. The pups came to play with us too and I was quite taken with one of the foster’s own dogs, a greyhound cross who was very friendly! The distinct personalities of the 3 puppies was apparent, there was the quiet one, the friendly one and the lively one – which was Holly. As ever I needed to give it some thought but this wasn’t the case for Carolynne and the next day we made our reservation.
It took a week before we could collect her, during this week we spent some time preparing the house and securing the garden ready for inspection by the RSPCA. Fortunately we passed this test and we were allowed to collect as soon as practical, the next day I already had off work for our anniversary and so everything came together.
It’s been two weeks since then and Holly has settled in well. She’s very well behaved and is clearly very intelligent having already learned “sit” and “stay”. Like the cats she has her mad half-hours but unlike them she’s easily subdued. The cats are starting to accept her more after initially giving her a wide berth. Yuki has some serious prejudice to deal with from his experiences with the local dogs. Ramsay being a house cat hasn’t any issues with her as such. She’s still house training which is a frustrating process but she’s improving slowly and is now able to tell us when she needs to go outside. Her main issue is car travelling which stresses her a lot resulting in rivers of drool oozing from her mouth, with practise though she’ll get better at it.
The biggest change we’ve seen however is her size, she’s almost doubled since we first met and her newly enlarged paws are promises of more to come. This is the surprise element of owning a mongrel puppy, you never know what you’re going to get! With any luck however she’ll live upto her early promise of being a faithful, beautiful, well behaved and obedient dog.
