Steinbeck (and a hay bale)

Labrador owners know that their dogs like to be a bit more adventurous than most, and our three-year-old Lab, Steinbeck (you can tell I'm a book lover, eh? :)) is no exception. There's nothing he likes more than rooting around in farmer's fields up to his neck in mud, and we're happy to let him do that provided the fields are empty of livestock and crops (especially seemingly empty fields full of discarded seed potatoes. He brought the idiom "as sick as a dog" to life in glorious technicolour a few months back, after gorging on a load).

We're lucky in that we have this rural vista only half an hour's walk from our home (looking at this you wouldn't think we only lived twelve miles from Edinburgh would you?), and we try to make as much use of it as possible.

Now as cute as Steinbeck looks here let me tell you that five minutes before this picture was taken, I had to chase him away from the rotting carcass of a hare. He had his nose buried in it for a good couple of minutes before I got to him. Lovely, eh?