Meet Hector

We have a puppy! He is a cocker spaniel (English cocker spaniels are a bit smaller than American cockers, for my US readers). He is a blue roan, which is breeder-speak for speckledy grey with black and white patches. Here he is.

There are two things that I've learnt about puppies. The first is that they are very hard to photograph, especially if they have black faces, because then it looks as if they don't have eyes. So forgive me the quality of the pictures in this post. The second is that they won't bother about getting house trained, if you don't bother. A lot. A very lot.

Apart from the house training issue (which is my fault, really, because I just can't build my life round taking a dog outside every 20 minutes, and what progress I'd made, we lost when half-term started and my eye was even less on the house training ball than before), he is a pleasure. He is fun, confident, unbelievably cute, and as 8-yo commented the other day "has brought a lot of joy to our lives". Most of our lives, in any case. I could say all but one of our lives... Looking at you here, Husband... You'll bond with him in time... Trust me...

I do particularly like the fact that he is good at nights. I wasn't looking forward to having to get up in the night to a barking or whining puppy, or those horribly early mornings when the puppy body clock says "day begins now". But Hector has got me up only once in the night. From night one, when we firmly shut the kitchen door, and the bedroom door, and didn't borrow a baby monitor, he settled well. He settles in the evening, and even though he hears us next door in the sitting room, he will put himself to bed in the kitchen, not even being offended if I go in to make a cup of tea. When half-term began, I predicted that his body clock would still be on school hours, but he only barks when he hears us get up. Of course the kitchen floor is littered with unwelcome surprises, but I'll happily mop those up if it means I've had an extra hour or two in bed.

I don't really know what else to tell you about Hector (for such is his name). Oh, except that he was clearly destined to be ours. I'd already short-listed Hector as a name (remember that blog post?). We'd decided on a cocker, a male, and my first choice was a blue roan. When I phoned a breeder, I asked if there were any males in the litter, and any blue roans. The breeder replied "There's only one blue roan boy. He's very inquisitive so we've nick-named him Hector the Inspector". We went to see the litter, and fell in love with Hector, but the children also fell for another, whom they nick-named Cuddles. Cuddles, an orange roan (brown and white), was the shy, timid puppy who pulled at heartstrings. The other puppies gambolled about, while Cuddles got tired, and simply fell asleep in the middle of the floor. So we went off to have a coffee and discuss the issue. I phoned the breeder, said we were still choosing between the two, and asked if we could come and have another look, (though I told the children that Hector was my first choice, as I preferred to have a confident rather than a timid dog). But while we had been having coffee, the next buyer - who had said he wanted one of the all-black puppies from the litter - had chosen orange roan Cuddles instead. So Hector was ours! It was meant to be.

Here are another couple of pictures of him. Bless his little, soft, furry, blue roan heart.