Puppy Again

This is David's new dog, Eddie. He collected her from the breeder yesterday. There is some concern over how the energetic young pointer pictured here will get along with the in situ pet Daphne the Tortoise, but this potentially difficulty has been deferred by putting Daph into hibernation until February, by which time Eddie may have calmed down. Anyway, if it gets ugly then Daphne can always call on her time-honoured survival strategy of disappearing into the undergrowth. So effective is this tactic that it once occasioned our being extremely late for a cocktail party after spending a whole afternoon desperately angling shaving mirrors and poking broomhandles under the garden shed because David was convinced she must be in there. Several increasingly fraught hours later, after the apparent failure of all attempts to entice her out with portions of brussels sprout, we were just beginning the process of removing all the contents of the shed with a view to dismantling it completely to retrieve the allegedly trapped tortoise, when I found her hiding in a patch of dandelions. Daphne had a mate once, called Niles, but he was eaten by a fox during another ill-starred recreational garden excursion. Let's hope the dog fares better.