Great Leaping Puppies

Puppy walking again this week. This one has spring-loaded paws so every step is an exuberant leap. She is Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout in dog form, when we reach a patch of grass larger than a postage stamp she dashes around me in concentric circles, growing bigger and bigger as I spin round with her trying to maintain some semblance of control over her direction and containing my dizziness.

And the winner is.... the husky

13 is a lucky number for dogs if they are pulling a Mackey in their sled. First Rick, then Dick and now Lance have won the legendary Iditarod, the Alaskan marathon for huskies. The family winners all took bib number 13 and won the event on their sixth race. As far as dog races go (and this one is 1,770km) the Iditarod takes the dog biscuit, lasting anything from nine to fifteen days. This year's sled contest took Lance Mackey nine days, five hours and eight minutes. And not content with simply one win this year, he's also the first musher to win both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year.

Poodle rockin'

I have just uploaded the Gorky's song Poodle rockin' to my mobile, so whenever my dog phone rings I am treated to a cacophony of tuneful barking. Better than what I had before - the theme to Dog Tanian and the Three Muskahounds.

I have a new client, a poodle. She is very cute, and sports a fun-sized black perm, a little shaggy, which her owner informs me is the 'puppy cut.' Ahh. She is a bouncy eight months old. I like when the dogs are happy in their hair. I was walking a dog the other weekend who had just been for the snip (I mean a hair cut) and seemed all the chirpier for it. More mobile, and far lighter, he scampered around with a new lease of life.
In America, the poodle became so unpopular in the 1920s it almost died out - can you imagine a poodle-parlour free world? Yet the poodle was originally a tough, butch breed, a water dog renowned for its duck hunting skills, without a bow in sight. The name is from the German for puddle (pfudel), and those little puffs of fancily trimmed fur at ankle and tail, as well as the No. 1 close shave on the upper thighs were first of all practical - designed for protection and mobility when hunting and swimming.

Filming Walk My Dog!

I was called about filming Walk My Dog by a Croatian journalist. Ivanka called me to ask if she could feature Walk My Dog as her main news story, since they don't have pet sitters or dog walkers in Croatia and hopes to use it for her TV station when she returns. She is doing a short week-long course at Cardiff's Thomson Institute, a media charity training students how to use cameras to make their own stories.

More mud!

Out in the countryside this morning for an hour-long mud fest through woods, up hills, and over fields with an impossibly small dog. Cyril needs the exercise. He doesn't get many outings, and as a consequence his belly has grown to meet the ground - his fur dragging on the ground, picking up small twigs and debris as he travels. He badly needs this walk and almost gagged with glee at the prospect of the open path after just a few metres of freedom. Far more exciting than the garden!