William, Meg and Molly

Molly at speed

Meg and William by the old badger set

We were having a photo shoot with Meg and William in the paddock, and were concentrating on Meg when suddenly William went missing. We found him at top of the field where he had discovered a badger set and was digging like mad to see what was down there. Fortunately for him it was empty, I hate to think what a group of badgers would have done to him, defending their home against a Newfie invader; one thing is sure he would never have looked like this again. We stopped him and cleaned him up and continued with the photo shoot.

A little later on he took Meg along to see his dig. I don’t know why they are both looking so guilty maybe William was still regretting the thing he was reprimanded for and Meg sympathised. This is when we took this photo, and it is now hanging in the Newfoundland gallery. Sadly we have misplaced all the other pictures we have of the Newfs, actually I think they are literally buried in the roof somewhere. Since my daughter got divorced and left her family home we have been storing her things and since they came last, our stuff is under/behind hers along with the pictures. So just sometimes we use other people’s pictures to remind us of those days. “Isn’t this like one of our dogs?” is a question often heard.

Still life goes on and now we borrow next doors dog and pony to feed our need for animal friends. The dog is a whippet called Molly who just walked into their yard one day, under fed, full of fleas and cowering at anything that moved quickly. A thorough search was done to try to find her owner without success, not surprising really we all felt she had just been kicked out. Now two years later she is a loved and loving confident dog, healthy and almost fully recovered. She still remembers something as she will cower if she thinks she has done something wrong and rushes through half opened doorways. She is next doors dog but they are away a lot of the time so we have her and love it, none of us could see her put into kennels no matter how good they were; our belief with her past whatever it was, even a few days in kennels would destroy her.

It’s odd but until Molly came along I had never even thought about whippets. But now I’ve got to know her she has made me realise just what a lovely temperament they have. Mind you Molly is the only one I really know and her background is still a mystery to us so what effect that has had on her could be a bit of a factor. Exercising her is fairly easy we take her up to the field and for about 10 minutes she run round at full bore, the breed can clock up 30mph and I should thing she pretty close to that then she sleeps for most of the day. Until it’s all repeated later.. It’s difficult to accept that it’s quite natural for her to be so thin after having Newfs but she eats what she wants over the day and adjusts her intake to needs. I really look forward to the neighbours going away!