Autumn’s Dog Days

I am never sure why the habit of photographing puppies tails off (as ’twere) as they get older, since they remain no less adorable.  It is in part, I suppose, their now total mobility.  I have a collection of blurry images that tell the viewer little.  Much amusement is at present created by encouraging the pups to climb the front stairs, then watching as Rosie and Jackie descend and Tom is confronted by a (temporary) failure of his confidence with regard to the business of just how to get down again.  He paces along the porch boards looking thoughtful, assuming that at some point the solution will reveal itself.

The era of universal bities has happily passed and toes and socks are safe again, although Rosie continues a certain amount of project management in this area on her own.  The predictability of elimination is growing and housetraining will soon have to commence.  I am one who favours thoroughness rather than haste in this, but it never gets any easier or more fun.

I must soon cease my procrastinating in the matter of finding a future home for Rosie, not least because I will have to register the pups shortly.  Her red-dog singularity and her resemblance to her dam endear her to us wholeheartedly, but we cannot keep two more dogs.  By way of illustrating the pathos of this task, here is a señor-shot video made around ten days ago, in which Rosie plays with Fern.

Rosie and Fern at Play from Harvest Bird on Vimeo.

I know that many of you have wondered why we named the dog of the litter Tom, when my Twitter and Facebook Toms are many already (and people, not dogs). Litter names often change when pups go to their homes, so I charged harvestmother with the task of naming the dog pup for us, not long after he was born and shown to be thriving. Tom is a name from her family, her grandfather, the father-in-law of the original Arthur. As we have kept a family strain going in all our dog pups — Eddie too has roots in ancestor names — this seemed (pace @badtom, @mrgoulter and @twelveplusone) appropriate.