The new puppy

Following on from last month and the loss of my youngest Lurcher I now have the new puppy. Bought from a chap in Yorkshire, once again I seem to have broken most of the puppy buying rules and got away with it. I found my puppy on the internet which, of course, meant I had no knowledge of the breeder and no one to ask. The best I could do was to phone him and have a fairly probing conversation in order to try and establish if he was ok. I concluded that the chap was indeed genuine and he clearly knew his stuff regarding lurchers in general. He told me he had his breed lines back through a number of generations and that he had only ever used Greyhounds, Border Collies and Bearded Collies in his breeding mix. I asked for some photos of the male puppies which, through the marvels of the internet, arrived in a few minutes. The litter consisted of eleven puppies of which seven were dogs. I chose a blue grey dog and arranged a collection date for a fortnight ahead. In the meantime my grandson Tom saw the pictures and with the willing help of his mother persuaded his dad to allow him to have his first dog. So now we were going to collect two puppies. Tom’s choice was a very fluffy black and white dog puppy which looked very much like a Border Collie. 

There is always an excitement about getting a new puppy and this one was no exception, the anticipation was intense and the days seemed to drag.Never have two weeks seemed so long. Because of the distance involved we had decided to drive up on the afternoon before collection and drive back the following day with the puppies. During the two weeks prior to collection I was in regular touch with the breeder, not least,to reassure him that I was not a time waster as he had encountered a number of such people already. Jimmy, the breeder kept me up to date and sent a number of photos of the puppies and both parents . 

So the big day came and off we went early on a Wednesday afternoon.M5… M42 and M1. Mid-week, I assumed, would ensure a fairly reasonable journey, how wrong I was. Upon reaching Birmingham we started to encounter large amounts of traffic and basically things went down- hill from there. Road works and fifty mile an hour speed restrictions for miles, where actually there was little evidence of work of any kind taking place just endless miles of traffic cones. To cut a long story short we eventually reached our hotel much later than anticipated and quickly went to ground in a very nice local pub to take on board urgently needed restorative supplies. 

Next morning we arrived at Jimmies place and found an amazing litter of extremely well cared for puppies. Mum, having reared eleven whelps, looked in fine fettle and was an absolute delight. A very shaggy Lurcher she had, as do most Lurchers, a very pleasant disposition. Absolutely delighted with our puppies we loaded them up in the car only to be joined by a number of Jimmies neighbours,in the road, to wish them farewell. It seemed that the litter had become something of local celebrities and the focal point of much interest. 

Our journey back, save for the wretched road works, was much better and hassle free. We arrived home mid-afternoon.

Bertie, for we have named him after our much loved original Bertie, has settled into life with us and, more importantly, with our old lurcher and two aging terriers. Having had his first course of injections and been declared an excellent puppy by the Vet he responds to his name and is becoming good at coming when called. All we need now is to get him to do his little tiddles outside …great joy!

I am confident Bertie will turn out to be just what I wanted and go a long way towards filling the void left by Bertie number one.