New arrival

It’s the summer holidays! Woo! The time of year when I am usually cramming in as much crafting, baking and allotmenting as possible. All these things are still going on, but in a slightly more haphazard way than usual, because we have a new arrival to contend with. May I introduce Rory!

Rory is a 10-week-old working Cocker Spaniel. He came home with us a week ago. I now have the rest of the holidays to train him so that he’s ready to go into the office with Chris when I go back to school! He gets his second jab next week and I can’t wait to be able to take him for little walks. I have been carrying him around in a specially made dog carrier, which worked well for a brief while but quickly broke.

I’m waiting to see if I can get a replacement, as we’re off to Skye later in the summer and Rory won’t be up to walking very far! (Also, spot the FO!)

He’s settled in amazingly well. Within a week he was sleeping through the night without crying to go out, he’s been exploring the garden almost faster than we can dog-proof it (and he has a worrying tendency to eat stones!) and he already knows several commands (although he currently views them more as requests). I’m just starting to introduce the whistle – while we wanted a working dog so he would have the stamina to come running and hillwalking with us, I’ve been doing lots of reading about gundog training and I think I’m going to at least try some of the basic exercises. It’s really interesting, and I’m going to have to look into going along to a game fair or something – I’d love to see properly trained dogs working.

Incidentally, his name has always been one of my favourite male names, and I liked the fact that it also contains a bonus Doctor Who reference!

I’ll leave you with a picture of Rory with his favourite toy, Dave the Duck:

 

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