Setting the Scene.

I'm a little over-excited. In one week and one day me and my boyfriend, S, are going to be going and picking up our new puppy and bringing him home. It doesn't really get much more exciting than that does it? We went to see the litter last weekend and had the pick of the litter to choose our little lad... We seem to have picked the biggest boy puppy; he's going to be such a handful! He's a springer spaniel cross working cocker spaniel. Both his parents are working farm and hunting dogs so he's going to be very full of go and, I'm hoping, robust health-wise with some hybrid vigour as well.

At first glance it appears quite unwise for two people who work full-time to have decided on a dog from working lines as a pet. However, this was a deliberate pick because we need a dog that will have the trainability and stamina to come fell running with us (hence this blog being called what it's called) and hopefully we've found the basic raw material. Now we've got to try and train him well enough to turn him into a take-anywhere kind of hound. And that'll be the interesting bit.

I have decided to write this blog so that I can waffle on at length about puppy and how he's doing, how his training is going, how many poos he's done today (well maybe not but I'm bound to talk about poo at some point, it's a dog-owner thing and a runner thing - I'm doubley doomed) and all that good stuff without boring to death the lovely people who read my running and life blog (located elsewhere in the internetosphere).

I was going to do a bit of a roll call of characters you might come across starring in this blog but we'll do that as and when they appear, for now there's me, S and puppy (who will be called Oscar as soon as he is ours officially). And I best stop writing soon, we have a busy weekend ahead. We need to completely puppy-proof the house and garden, which is going to involve chicken wire, trellis, baby gates, puppy pens and a lot of tidying up. We are hoping to go visit the puppies again (apparently he's grown loads since we saw them just last week). And we'll probably try and get out on the bikes and we have a running road race tomorrow - eek!

So there you go. It has begun.

xxx