New dog, new posts, and soon-to-be new home...

Milly in Devon - new dog, retired greyhound and bed-hogger

Last July when I resolved to be a better blogger I couldn't have made a bigger mistake. I'm not going to write about what happened here (if anyone really wants to know, there's a brief update on my About page).

I'm cautious, now, about saying I'll be here more regularly. For a start, there are now three dogs to be walked. Milly arrived in December and was an instant hit with Cuddy. Pip doesn't really care either way, except when someone else has the sofa and she wants it.

Milly meets Cuddy

Pip is Senior Dog, and conscious of her status. She's not conscious of much else, in fact, and spends most of the day asking to be let out, then in, then out again. I saw a post on Facebook yesterday of a dog outside a French window with the caption "Let me in because I want to go out again." That's Pip. She's had mast cell tumours for several years - in fact, has lived far longer than we expected - but she is full of cheerful anticipation for walks and food and, at twelve, is quite a good age for a small brown lurcher.

 Milly discovers the sea

Pip and Cuddy snuggling - a fairly rare occurrence

Pip and Milly do not snuggle. Cuddy will cuddle anyone, he's the cuddliest dog I've known. We should have called him Cuddles. I often do. He's also an escapologist. You walk near a fence with him and one minute he's beside you and the next - PING! - he's over it. And miles away. After a fox, a deer, a hare, a rook... we have to take him round the garden on a lead. Fortunately, Milly doesn't really know that she can jump, and Pip can't any more, so he goes alone, which makes him more inclined to come back. But lurchers and recall don't mix.

When Milly arrived she was highly neurotic - she's always hated bangs and loud noises, so I was a bit apprehensive about the move, as we are usually surrounded by bird-scarers. In Devon, she used to refuse to go for walks if she heard the steam train whistle - just dig her toes in and refuse to move. So we didn't make demands on her - if she wouldn't go beyond the garden we didn't push her, if she wanted to spend the whole day on my bed we let her. It's paid off, she is now much more confident and obviously sees herself as not just a member of the family but of the pack as well. I was also a little nervous about her reaction to the cat and the hens, but it's been okay. Indeed, she seems to rather like the Loki the cat, while the hens are generally ignored after an initial dreadful moment when she caught one and I thought she might have hurt it. But the hen was merely ruffled and Milly received one of her very rare tellings-off - they are so rare that it seemed to take immediate effect. The chickens are, wisely, still a bit wary. (In fact, I could wish they were more so, as we have a fox lives very close by.)

I like this one! (All but the first photo © Slink Jadranko) 

Although my intention is to get back to blogging much more regularly, a mad decision to move house may interfere. We're only moving a few miles, to somewhere with slightly less land, and it won't happen for a couple of months, but it's going to be a very busy summer!

Easter bunnies - a seasonal ramble

Vintage Chinese jade, age unknown

Most days when we walk the dogs at home we see hares. There is always something magical about them and on the occasions when I see one actually in our paddock, I feel privileged, even if they are eating the bark on my young apple trees. Cuddy* likes to see them too, although this is one of the reasons we are planning to move, so that we can have i) a dogproof garden and ii) live somewhere where we're not constantly surrounded by people waving shotguns (escaping dogs and gamekeepers are not a happy combination!).

Hares and rabbits have a long association with Easter - indeed, I suspect it was my enthusiasm for the Easter Bunny and his generosity with chocolate eggs which led to my having an imaginary friend who was a rabbit. Slightly smaller than me, she was a very girly rabbit, with a liking for bows on her ears and pink frocks with sashes. Her name was Bunny Dolores (that's Dol-lores with only two syllables, and there was nothing dolorous about her, so goodness knows where I got it from; I also had imaginary friends called Gary Susan and Old Sub, so your guess is as good as mine).

Later, I came across the Tinners' Rabbits, which at that time were thought to be associated primarily with the guilds of tin miners in Devon, hence their appearance in Devon's stannary churches. These three hares (because they are usually hares, not coneys) are conjoined by their ears in a constant-motion triskele, and appear in roof-bosses in churches in Devon and beyond. In a wonderful blog post  today on the mythology of rabbits and hares, Terri Windling talks about the Three Hares Project which tracked the hare triskele across Europe to India and China, finding that the Devon instances were nothing new.

Two German versions, from the 17th century

A modern Three Hares puzzle, by Will Witham

My own small tribute to the power of the three hares symbol is a Pinterest board called Tinners Rabbits, where I'm collecting images old and new for my own pleasure. A couple of other creatures have  crept in, I notice, where they seem to share a common source, and I haven't restricted my selection only to the triskele, finding many images which celebrate the mystical nature of these enchanting creatures (actually the board was originally shared with Green Men, but they got relegated somewhere along the way; the hares and rabbits inevitably demanded a space to themselves).

Happy Easter!

*I think I should add that he appears to like the idea of playing with them; if they would just chase him back he would be so happy.