Totally lush dog

...is how one of the local children described Bingley recently!

It's been a hectic few days but we've still been managing to take Bingley out for his regular walks. Each day seems to bring new adventures and fresh developments: for example, over the weekend we've had to bin over half of his toys. The reason? Quite simply, his teeth! Labradors are known to be chewers, but some seem to be chewier chewers than others and we appear to have one of the chewiest models available. No structural damage to the house yet, though the skirting board in his dog house is significantly thinner than it was; but his toys have been decimated....actually desiccated would be a more accurate description. And I'm not talking about light weight toys here, I'm referring to dedicated teething equipment made out of hard 'indestructible' (ha ha) plastic. When I go down to check him out during the day, I'm now used to finding a mosaic of coloured plastic around his bed, and I know that yet another toy is destined for the bin.

The daily walks do nothing to alleviate this ferocious chewing, but he always falls asleep soon after our return and he hasn't yet learned to chew in has sleep (though I have to mention, indiscreetly, that I heard him gently snoring this afternoon!). The walks are good fun...on the whole! He's definitely starting to get the hang of walking to heel whilst we're on the pavement; taking him onto the field is a different matter, but I'm happy to give him some leeway there. Not that I have a great deal of choice: some of those smells are just tooooo tempting. In fact, parts of our circuit I've had too start avoiding altogether - he seems to have acquired a bizarre (to me at least) taste for goose droppings. As always, I'm not sure if this would be harmful to him; I've heard that dogs will eat horse manure, and goose manure isn't that different - just smaller and not as easy to spot before it’s too late. Nevertheless, the sight of his smeary tongue after he's chewed a dollop isn't appealing, and I think that I'd rather he didn't. The list of things he does which I'd rather he didn't do is, of course, getting longer; and the list isn't, as I'm learning, likely to come to an end any time soon. Nevertheless, I have to admit that as I stood there this afternoon and listened to him quietly snoring, that list was easily forgotten.