Toff’s first year in the village.

Full disclosure, I didn’t take this photo. It was taken by a friend in the village who is a better photographer than me and has a far superior camera and telefoto lens. Plus when we bumped into him with his wife and their dog, he had his camera and I didn’t. I am inspired now to put the phone aside, dust off the Nikon and zoom lens, and take some photos of her myself. C particularly liked this head on shot that shows that typical collie locked-on focus, as well as her ears which are as expressive as Gromit’s.

We took Toff for a tour of the village and she met a few of the local dogs and their owners. We weren’t sure how she would react, as she is very timid with people. But she was just fine, and after this photo was taken she made an instant best friend with the photographer’s dog, and they had a good, bounding chase around together at high speed complete with acrobatic leaps from Toff.

Last night I read Marpaul’s first few blips from when she first picked up the beautiful Misty who until then had lived outside and was quite timid. She could have been describing Toff’s first few days. So we took some encouragement in knowing how Misty settled into her new life. Our main worry had been sorting out Toff’s house training, and discovering that unlike a male dog, she can go a whole walk without a wee. Until this evening, she had gone nearly 48 hours without a bowel movement. Anyway, enough of that sort of information, we are learning to spot the signs and it looks like she is settling into a more desirable pattern.

We stayed in with her last night, as she was a little spooked by the early fireworks, and we didn’t want her on her own when the usual fusillade of bangs and crashes went off at midnight and beyond.

Happy New Year to everyone in blipland. As a statement of intent I renewed by blip subscription yesterday on the day it was due. I did try to do the New Year Plant Hunt today, but I was rather distracted with Toff, so the count was an unimpressive 8. In some ways that’s a good thing, it shows that we had some wintery weather early on, enough to dispatch some of the lingering flowers from the summer/autumn. But then as we walked round the village last night with Toff, we saw a very early great crested newt as well as one that had already been flattened on the road.