Pixie prefers the softness of a cashmere sweater.
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Granddaughter number 2 is travelling around Australia with her partner. She rang to tell us that we’re great grandparents and sent me this. He’s an Australian kelpie pup.
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Seems like many of your family & friends are trying to find you a new four legged friend Pete.
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Meet Poppy, a 4 year old black Labrador retriever who we have arranged to borrow to come on walks with us, under the Borrow My Doggy scheme. Today was our first walk without the owner being present. The next planned borrow is Friday.
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Is this a scheme to help less able owners to ensure that they’re dogs get an opportunity to get exercise in a way they struggle to achieve?
It’s any owners not just less able ones. Poppy’s owner works full time and there is no-one else at home during the day. She has arrangements so the dog does get out once during the day and she walks her herself first thing in the morning and after work, but she wanted more company/exercise for her during the day. So us taking her off for two hours at 8am for a reasonably long walk in woods/heath is potentially a big quality of life thing for the dog and we get a companion for the walks we were already doing on our own.
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Is this a local thing to you David, or is it more widespread.
My mother in law has a labradoodle that could use more time. Since my father in law died a couple of years ago, it’s been harder for him to get regular longer excursions.
They live in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk.
It’s national. If you Google “Borrow my doggy” then you will find the link.
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Personally, I think it’s totally wrong to leave a dog, alone, for long periods of time 
They’re a pack animal and this can be very upsetting for them Anyone that gets a dog knowing that it will be left for anything up to 9+ hours (assuming working day) is, sorry, just wrong. My parents did it with our dog and, thinking back, it still upsets me now.
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The transition from lockdown to normality has been a big issue too.
Happily this dog we are borrowing hasn’t ever been left for 9 hours. The owner always arranged for someone to walk her for half an hour or so in the middle of the day, or goes home herself to do it.
tbh, half an hour over a full day is pretty poor
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Totally agree, leave them that long on their own they get bored and stressed. It’s also a recipe for a badly behaved dog that leads to all sorts of problems. We have a saying in our family if you can’t look after them don’t have one, they are best when they’re part of the pack (family).
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I’m not disagreeing with you, but she also walks the dog before work and in the evening. Anyway Poppy enjoyed her 2 hour walk with us yesterday and I am looking forward to doing it again on Friday.
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Lock down and now back to the norm, returning to office has definitely created many problems. One colleagues of mine just said he gave back his dog. Poor pooch. Mine in ways have become better and worst. My girl has medical issues and benefiting from us being around all the time, but they have well and truly turned into Velcro pooches. And we discovered the boy likes to follow lines. We could be 30m away and he looks at us wondering why we don’t follow him and stick to the lines. 
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So just to show that not all my cat activity here is related to Freddie’s sore eye, here is Billy displaying an appropriate sense of entitlement in our kitchen a few minutes ago.
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Handsome chap (the cat, just to be clear!)
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He’s guarding the chicken stew!!
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Our Cyprus rescue, Ollie. He was left in a box with his two brothers in a church toilet in Limassol in 2017. Luckily they were discovered and handed in to a local charity, of which there are loads all around the Med, as you may know. We’ve always had rescues, and as we’d just lost our 16-year old Jack Russell, we offered him a home. We were able to get him when he could travel at 15 weeks old. He’s now 5, and we absolutely adore him; he loves life, and loves people, and we’ve made many new friends from just stopping and talking to people when we’re out walking him. Dogs are great like that!
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