This little pocket rocket of a Staffie is called Red, and at the time of writing, he’s available for adoption at BCDH. Pant-pant-pant!

Genghis Khan – he of the floppy ears – has become my regular companion at BCDH, and, though the picture above was taken last week when I was on my own, Mrs P and I both went up today to give the young mutt a bit of exercise. We actually managed, after an hour’s walk and a half-hour frantic scamper around the paddock in pursuit of his rubber ring, to tire him out to an extent that the carers thought most un-Genghis-like.

It’s glorious up there these days; Summer is at full strain, and the greenery is just stunning.

Of all the breeds we’ve walked, none have been as strong as the German Shepherd. Combine this with their relative indifference to us hoomans, and they haven’t been a particular joy to walk. Still, Tess was a sweet big lunk. (‘Big’ being the operative word.)

It’s been quiet on the dog-walking front recently, partly through pressure of work, and partly because I’d been working with dogs y’all had seen before. Today, though, I was determined to get up to BCDH, and we walked a very, very sweet Rottweiler called Jazz. She goes proper batshit-crazy when there are other dogs around, but once she’s out and walking, she’s one of the most good-natured mutts you’d ever meet. I mean, look!

So it turns out that Ellie has a reserve. So after taking her out for a run about in the paddock with me, she went out with her putative new owners, and I ended up with a crazed shaggy lurcher, Genghis Khan. I assume his ears have been docked, though I could be wrong. Regardless, they are most diverting company when walking:



And here he is just having a sniff around:

I was slightly wary of Ellie the Weimaraner, having been told she was ‘in here for a reason’ and being warned that she was dog-aggressive, but as it turned out she was sweet as pie. When we encountered other dogs, I’d just stop, keep her on a short leash, and keep a gentle touch on her head to remind her I was there and I was calm. And in fact, once we were out into the fields, she was nothing short of lovely – very playful, though desperate to be off her lead, and affectionate. And just look at those big floppy ears! More pictures – including her Queen of the World™ pose – on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

This is Teenie, a Doberman with an inexpertly-docked (hence, still not healed) tail.



The snow makes her go a bit mad.



(Man, I really shouldn’t put Lightroom-tweaked raw photos from a DSLR next to video output from the iPhone 3GS. Bleurch.) More pics on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

One of the highlights of visiting the folks’ for Christmas was meeting their two new cats, Buddy and Lennon. Both ginger toms – they’re not brothers, though they’ll snuggle down together and wash each other – they have very distinct personalities. When I got home, sadly, I found that I only had pictures of one, the more timid Lennon, but aww, just look!

What bigs eyes you have!


What big teeth you have!


What a pink nose you have!


What fluffy paws you have!

This sad little chap is Spike, an American Bulldog who was rehomed from the Bath Cats and Dogs Home and later dumped again at Weston-super-Mare to be found as a stray and picked up by volunteers a second time. He’s thin, timid and tired.



I’m not overly sentimental about animals, and on the scale of human cruelty, I guess that dumping a dog for whatever reason barely registers, but I’m utterly at a loss as to why someone, having taken an animal from a rescue home – and having been given the education that is insisted on there – would still think it acceptable to pull up in a car, push a dog out, and drive off. They know that the rescue home exists, and while I’m sure you’d feel like a heel returning an animal to a centre after trying to home it, that’s surely preferable to betraying its trust and dumping it to fend for itself. Bah.

He wasn’t the most demonstrative dog – though latterly he warmed especially to Jenny – but he was very gentle and sweet with his big paws and his droopy jowls and his big heid, and he was delighted to see his carer again. I suspect he now sees the Bath Cats and Dogs Home as being his safe and loving place, which, though true, is still sad.

Meet Lennie – “a Labrador’s temperament stuck in a Staffi body”, his carer says – who I walked today. He didn’t care much for hoomans, though he warmed to me by the end of the walk, but it was lovely to get back up to the home after work had kept me away for two months. A couple more photos – not that they really add much – on Flickr.

Though Marley and Digger are apparently best friends, Marley – the Staffie cross – has a rather worrying habit of just walking on Digger, the Daschund cross. Sweet pair, though actually very nervous of other dogs. They're new additions to the home, having just arrived yesterday. Shot some video too; will edit and upload later.

Oh, look; we walked a lovely big Akita Inu teddy bear from Hamleys. More photos here, though you should also watch this video of an Akita Inu puppy. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Meet Daisy, the dog who lived in the house to which our little holiday gîte was attached. She's pulling that rather alarming face because she's in the middle of masticating one of the many figs that fell from the tree at the front door. You haven’t lived until you've seen a Staffie cross chow down on a series of sticky, slightly fermented figs. Now, you might think that eating dozens of figs wouldn't be good for a small dog, and if you did, the spate of mournful farts she let out in our company would seem to lend credence to your theory.



And, as always, there are a bunch more photos from France on Flickr. Not terrific shots, I must say; the weather was against me, and, worse, the muse just didn't seem to be with me.

Ma and Pa Phin came to visit a couple of weekends ago, and we went up ensemble to walk some dugs. We got Jess (top) and Monty, a couple of very, very sweet Collies. Monty, unless, as above, you were tickling his tummy, was a real ball of energy, and we were all exhausted when we brought them back to the kennels. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Meet Barnaby, a lazy St Bernard with a fondness for tummy rubs. We remain suspicious that he was not, in fact, a real dog, but was a man wearing a suit created by The Jim Henson Company. Such a big softie, he just stood there with a hurt expression while a family, who were out walking a muzzle-less Buster, let their dog take lump out of Barnaby’s big fluffy tail. (Special shot of the feather duster that he calls his tail shown in the second picture, below.) There are more shots of Barnaby getting some attention on Flickr.




And last week, we walked Kizzie, a sweet old Rottweiler whom we’ve walked before. We actually got her by mistake, as I got her confused with the much livelier Rottweiler, Cassie, that I’d had the week before. But then, after we’d walked Kizzie, we spotted Cassie in her kennel, and when I walked up to say hello, she bared her teeth and started barking at me. I’m going to go ahead and assume this was because she was feeling nervous, enclosed in her kennel, and that I’d just been too presumptuous in walking straight up to her, because she was very well behaved when I had walked her the week before. Plus, I was wearing sunglasses, and she might have been freaked by not being able to see my eyes. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Yesterday’s dog was Cassie, a Rottweiler who, unlike Kizzie, was decidedly not arthritic. She was strong, and it took us while to get to know each other, but by the end of walk, I had her sitting at heel like a good girl when we stopped and waited for other dogs to pass. (Of particular note since she lunged madly at the first few dogs we passed.) A combination of heavy sporadic rain and wanting to give her more attention than any of the other dogs I’ve walked to date meant that the only usable image I have of her is the tiny clip below, but I think it’s worth sharing to show that even Rotties are just big puppies underneath. (I was struck again by how alike dogs are; despite knowing that they share a common ancestor only a handful of generations back, it’s still striking to me that a stocky great lug of a beast like Cassie would sniff at a scent in the grass with the utmost delicacy and care, and that she’d respond to the same commands, affection and body language as any other.)



We also went to Cardiff to see Cope, and though we had to leave early today so I could get back and get some work done, we took time to visit the bay and stop into the Assembly building. It’s a stunning piece of architecture, and the use of wood and slate is a sympathetic yet bold mix of traditional materials and techniques married to uncompromisingly modern aesthetic. The openness and welcoming nature of the place is also striking.

What’s more, though the shots below – the brick building is not the Assembly, though I forget its name and use now – have been Photoshopped (sorry Adobe), they’re the first in-anger pictures I’ve taken with the iPhone 3GS, and they are at least passable.

Trudy – a cross between a collie and a lab, I think – was described as ‘very boisterous’. Quite. Still, after the first twenty minutes of mentalness, she settled and would even sit well – until the very last lungey second – as we waited to let other dogs pass. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Stig, my most favouritist of the nutjobs from the Bath Cat & Dogs Home, is shortly to get a new home. It’s not ours, sadly, so we took him for a last walk today. Man, I love this dog.

Marvin was, despite his angelic looks – brought to you here courtesy of my review iPhone 3GS – a bit of a Bad Dog. He was very young, pumped full of Collie madness, and clearly not dealing well with kennel life. Still, that was no excuse for jumping up, grabbing my t-shirt in his mouth, and tugging at it. It was all in play – no damage to the material, even – but never have I issued a ‘No!’ with such force. Bad dog!

Jamie came to visit us from that London place this weekend. Many and varied japes were had, including a visit to the Bath Cat and Dogs Home this morning to walk a sweet-natured lurcher called Flora and a young German Shepherd who rejoiced in the world’s chavviest name, Bacardi. Here is young Mr Malcolm displaying his dog mastery.



We also went out to Lacock; it’s only half an hour’s drive west of Bath, and it’s utterly entrancing. We’d been to the village before – where at the moment filming for Cranford is taking place – but never to the abbey. If the cloisters below look familiar somehow, it’s because it’s where many scenes for the Harry Potter franchise are shot. Lovely place, and if you’re local and haven’t yet been, floor tiger judges you.

Last week, we walked an arthritic Rottweiler called Kizzie, and a mental Staffie cross called Oxo. I forgot my camera. This week, I walked Oxo again, and forgot my camera again. So instead of photographs, Oxo will today be represented by an audio recording made on my iPhone of him as he snuffled around in the undergrowth. Click here to listen to him – we’re not sure if his obsession with spending minutes at a time sniffing an apparently insignificant patch of grass means his nose is hypersensitive or dulled beyond use. We just know that it takes twice as long to cover a set distance with him. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Stig may be the daftest dog ever born. When he found this stick, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to chew it or carry it, so opted for walking along, head tilted back, attempting to eat the stick at the same time. This was, it scarcely needs saying, doomed to failure, and the stick was frequently dropped. He would also, adorably, throw the stick for himself, tossing it away with a flick of the head then bounding the two strides to where it had landed before gumming it up again.


This is Stig on a log, trying to walk in seven directions at once, and chew his own lead. Like I said: daftest dog ever born. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

This is Cara. She is mad. We wanted to keep her. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Stig was huge, and was on two leads. He liked to stand on his hind legs with his front paws on my shoulders, and to chew his chain lead. He was, however, a sweetheart, and I was given some treats to help train him; if he got too boisterous, you gave him the ‘sit’ command while holding a treat at shoulder level. He’d immediately drop to his haunches – good boy! – and sit waiting for his treat which you’d then drop for him to clop out of mid-air. (He did at one point try to clop a bumble bee out of mid-air, but missed, luckily.)

I forgot to put a card in my DSLR, so the above picture is courtesy of the iPhone’s appalling sensor, heavily Photoshopped.

Another Sooper Sekrit project at MacFormat has kept me occupied for a while, but that’s all done and dusted and the only thing* keeping me from blogging more regularly is, y’know, the actual day job.

Never mind; it’s all good. I have new laptop, our dishwasher will soon be plumbed in, and we have all sort of japes planned for the end of the week when I shall be celebrating the final birthday of my second decade.

We bin walkin’ some dawgs, too, though I’m not going to dwell on this because the dog we walked last week, Shadow, managed to cut her nose while trying to wrestle her muzzle off, and the thought of this makes Wife sad. Here she (Shadow, not Wife) is, looking chipper, though; she was so utterly dedicated to straining at her (new; we finally bought one) leash that for most of the first half-hour she was walking at this ker-a-zee 45° angle.


And today, I went up and took a mastiff cross called Maurice (Maw-REECE) out for a spin. Very aggressive towards other dogs, he also had a worrying habit of lunging at small children too; a short leash, to put it mildly, was called for.

Once we were about in the fields, though, he settled down and was a real sweetie. Occasionally he’d block me, snooking his head around my leg so I couldn’t move it forward. He’d then stare dolefully up at me and give a small wag of his tail until I hunkered down and gave him some love. If I dropped something and had to stop, he'd trot solicitously back; “Oh, hello, hooman, you appear to have dropped something. I have no opposable thumbs, but I'd like to help. No? OK, what about a wag? What about leaning against you; I’m not particularly heavy?”


* Apart from all the other stuff. And Twitter.

Yay, the weekend. Christ, I was ready for it this week, and to celebrate I took myself off to Bath’s RSPCA cat and dogs’ home. Crazy deadlines over Christmas plus a general disruption to our routine meant we had got out of the way of the weekly walk, and I’ve been itching to get back into it.

Today’s companion on the walk was Alfie, ostensibly a Staffie though he looks a bit too gracile to me. I thought from that grey muzzle that he’d be a bit docile. Bollocks; he was fast and determined to follow only his route. I was originally resistant to this, but then I relented when He Found A Stick. Or rather, as you can see, a log-ette. He carried this for over a mile, and it was only when we were about to head back into the home – with me thinking they might be none too impressed – that I took a firm grip on it and said “give”. And he did. Given that I’m such a gamma male in real life, it’s astonishing how quickly dogs seem to identify me as the leader of the pack.




In other news, we bought a knife sharpener and a new iron today. They can, respectively, be summed up as “magical” and “badass”. The iron is black, yo, and has a two-stage anti-calc system. Respect.

What do you do with £500-worth of high-spec digital camera goodness? Why, take slow-mo shots of an aging Staffie eating grass, of course.

Pretty, pretty Sandy! Pretty boy! Look at that pretty face! He’d been in isolation and this was one of his first walks; he was literally jumping with excitement – bounding up to shoulder level – when he was brought out of his cage. He was very bright; though initially foxed by some of the swing-gates that we encountered – trying in the first instance to poke his head straight through the bars – by the time we were on our way back he knew just how to snake through them. Pretty, clever boy! Flickr pics here.

Meet Ozzie, the most doleful of Staffies. From his gummy eyes to the bald tip of his tail, this walking tragedy was nevertheless a real sweetheart who, whenever Jenny or I fell behind, would turn round and stare mournfully until the whole pack had caught up.

And now, excuse me while I fall asleep face-first into my keyboard. Despite taking Friday off, this has been a prodigiously busy weekend and I’m pooped.

Robbie — another Staffie since we find ourselves loving their compact, brassy charm — was a-dore-able. While for the first half of the walk he was all about the forward momentum, once he’d tired himself out a bit he became much more affectionate and would roll on his back to have his tummy tickled, submit to all sorts of velvety-wonton stroking, and even jump up next to me to have a cuddle when I sat on a log. He was the most outwardly affectionate of the dogs we’ve walked, and though he was happy to trot back into the home — and was delighted to see his carer again — when we walked away after giving him back, he tried to follow us. Bless.

He was a hugely muscled dog, and though small, he was capable of really tugging on the lead. His shoulder and hindquarters were just pure, solid muscle, of the kind that makes my flabby, sedentary body weep with jealousy.

In photography news, I need to start taking more control of shutter speeds. Lots of the shots I took today were too blurry, not because of ISO, aperture or available light but just because the camera was deciding that a slightly sluggish shutter would suffice. Tv mode needs more investigation, I feel. Some of the better shots are up on Flickr.

Yes, Gabriella was foisted on us again today, looking more dishevelled than ever from rummaging about in the long grass. Every day is a bad hair day for Gabriella. She was joined by Titch, and seemed much more lively than she had been in Troy’s company. They were quite sweet as a couple, actually, with Titch refusing to walk on if Gabriella was busy engaged in some post-sniffing or grass-munching.

The damp weather doesn’t auger well for this evening’s Crowded House gig at the Arboretum, but it did give me the opportunity to take some pretty, pre-release-Leopard-default-desktop-rip-off photos of dew on grass; download a desktop picture pack, here, licensed as . Lots more pictures of the dogs too, as always, on Flickr.

Or: Take two dogs into the shower? A moment of heart-stopping panic today when Troy (left) slipped his harness and went careering into an adjoining woodland; we could only hear him rustling around in the undergrowth. Just as I was about to call the home and tell them we’d lost one of their dogs, he popped his head up further along the wall and Jenny dropped everything – including Gabriella’s lead – and harnessed him back up again. Gabriella, bless her, just sort of stood there looking on and occasionally munching grass; no mad dash for freedom for her.

Troy’s boisterous-yet-lovable nature – he slipped his harness a second time, and was a wilful little bugger – led us to christen him Oliver Reed, and Gabriella’s grizzled old lady looks earned her the name of Elaine Paige. The naming-of-random-animals-that-don’t-belong-to-us continues.

Left my 400D in the office on Friday, so pictures are courtesy of my PowerShot S70; found it more difficult to process the RAW images to give me a pleasing finished image than with the 400D, and I’m still not entirely happy with the finished result. It’s a bit flat. Hey ho.

Today, we walked a greyhound. I say ‘walked’. I mean ‘stood in close proximity to while she rolled around in the grass and snuffled into the undergrowth’. It was ironic that of all the dogs we’ve walked, the greyhound’s circuit took by far the longest thanks to Nelly’s insistence on flopping her butt down with a thump and rolling around in the long grass.

She clearly hated the kennels, and for the first time we felt oddly guilty about handing a dog back to the (very nice) staff. The other dogs we’ve walked seemed to have a pretty stoic attitude – “OK, well, thanks for that walk, friends; no hard feelings OK? I’ll just be here in this cage if you need me...” – but we really got the impression from Nelly that every time she gets taken out for a walk, she hopes she’ll never be taken back; we felt like we’d betrayed her just a little.

This old lady's most endearing physical characteristic was the two little head-mounted leathery wontons that she calls ears. Her most endearing personality trait was her slightly grudging and undemonstrative affection; I lay on my stomach at one point to take some dogs-eye view shots and Jade walked straight towards me, tucked her head against my shoulder, and just stood there leaning against me.

Note, we'd have to change her name if she was ours. We'd go with ‘Gloria’.

Things we've learned about Big Dogs from Fraser, today's walking companion:

1. We lack upper body strength.
2. Big Dogs do Big Shits.
3. Some dogs don't really care much about hoomans; Buster and Fraser were more disdainful towards our presence than any cat we've ever been snubbed by.
4. We really want to walk – and photograph – a dog that doesn't need any sort of face furniture; we completely understand why Buster had a muzzle and Fraser had his face-strappy second lead arrangement, but you can't help but feel sorry for the little guys.

In other news, I appear to be unable to post a photograph without trying new ways to create a subtle vignette effect, a thing photographers have been trying to eradicate with better optics for years. I wonder if there are support groups I can go to; “Hi, my name's Chris and I put an archaic low-end photography effect on any picture I take with my expensive semi-pro camera.”

Blargh. Here's the equation of my life at the moment:

One dead hard disk + One chipped front tooth + One inexplicably painful y-ligament + Piss-poor + (Long nails + showering quickly + a painful nip in a surprisingly intimate area) / (Walking a dog + Making two huge lasagnes) = Meh.

So yes, not sure what's going to happen with my chipped tooth (and no, I have no idea how it happened) as I'm having a hellish time finding a dentist in Bath. The hard disk has been swapped for a rather lovely 250GB Western Digital Scorpio, so that's a bit of all right. There's bugger all I can do about the cash situation – apart from whoring myself out to sister Future titles for freelance – and the lens from Mrs P's glasses spontaneously popped out today while watching telly.

Never mind. Today we went up to the Bath Cats and Dogs Home and walked a long-legged Jack Russell cross called Buster. He was a cute little thing, though he had to wear a muzzle as he's 'dog-aggressive'. I refused to go and see the cats as I'd have been unable to walk away without secreting some old and mouldering puss somewhere about my person. More dog-walking is in order, I reckon, and I have a horrible feeling that we're on the brink of physically threatening our octogenarian neighbour-landlord until she agrees that we can keep a bugfuck crazy retirement-age pet.

We do also, however, have some fun things planned. We're signed up for Crowded House at the arboretum, Ben Folds at the academy in Bristol and, perhaps best of all, a hot air balloon flight at the end of May courtesy of an almost year-old housewarming present from my folks.

Oh, and my lasagnes promise to be fucking epic.