Welcome to The Dog Blog part of The Daily Mellis – the online domain of man’s best, and often smelliest, friend. For those who’ve been listening to me on Northsound 1 for a number of years (and are in the exceptionally fortunate position of not being admitted for full time psychiatric care), you may remember we used to own a Border Collie called Holly.
In retrospect, somewhat stupidly, I made the decision to feature her on our breakfast show, making her a part of it. After a few flippant remarks and asides it became abundantly obvious she was waaaaaaay more popular than I was, and it kind of snowballed from there. We got her to come along to events with us on local holidays, which were her Public Holly-Days, (see what we did there).
People used to send her birthday cards and Christmas gifts. It was crazy.
She was a great dog too. Everything, and I mean, every, aspect of her nature was brilliant. She suited us very well, and I think she quite liked us back.
The down side of this little tale though, is that she developed cancer. Without going into too much detail of what was a thoroughly rotten time, and quite lengthy period at that, I had to come in to the show one day and tell the audience we’d had to put Holly out of her pain.
I felt like John Noakes with Shep on Blue Peter.
It was then I swore blind I would never, ever, in a million years go through anything like that ever again.
Never say never.
Meet Bailey and Bracken.
Holly died in December. We lasted until the end of January. My wife thought we should have a period where we lived without a dog, not rush into anything. I reluctantly agreed. In the end, and she’ll probably disagree, she was the one looking at ads in the paper for a new puppy.
We saw one, which was for a litter of Border collie pups on a farm near Rothienorman. Turns out it was a really small litter. There were only three pups. The farmer had decided to keep one himself to work the property. The other two were for sale. I’ll be honest -it was a no-brainer. We automatically fell in love with Bailey. He was like the photo-negative of your standard Border collie. 95 percent white colouring. The only black, one splotch on his back, and the rest over his eyes like a burglar’s mask.
The dog which the farmer was keeping was a far more traditional looking Border, pleasant enough looking, but not for sale.
Which left the runt of the litter.
She really wasn’t much to look at. Scratchy features, eyes which looked full of sleepy crumbs. Clearly we hadn’t caught her on her best day.
Having paid the farmer, I was ready to leave and set about trying to put our new puppy in the back of the car. It was as I lifted the little ball of fluff. I noticed he had the paws of a lion cub and began to worry he was going at some stage to grow into them. It was a fleeting thought, one dismissed from my mind as I conducted the standard ‘have we got everything’ check one does when you’re about to get in the car to set off on a journey.
It was only then I noticed Lynne was lagging behind.
Let me save you the bother of the next ten minutes of persuasion. I lost. I always knew I was going to. I don’t know why I tried. I certainly shouldn’t have bothered. I thought it was madness, and on that point I was right.
Needless to say, we left a farmer with twice as much money, and half the bother he thought he was going to get from us.
We also left with a dog that was destined to grow to the size of a small polar bear wearing a burglar’s mask, and a little runt of a pup who was destined to grow into a beautiful collie dog that no-one could ever have imagined.
Both were sick in the back of the car on the way home.
Both played their own part in eating it back up again before we got there.
In their time they’ve completely chewed apart various rooms in our house. Cut us off the telephone by eating the cables on at least three separate occasions, pulled the curtains from the wall and the curtain poll down on top of them in the process, and neither of them will ever replace Holly in our hearts.
But we love them.
If I’m going to be completely honest with the advice here; never buy two dogs from the same litter, and if you do, never get a brother and sister. Not unless you’re planning on separating them at a certain age with a concrete perimeter.
Alternatively, you could just opt for the same method we did and go for the pom-
poms in a jar route with your boy dog.
So here they are. Bailey and Bracken. What can I tell you about them and their personalities?
Bailey is a huge big loveable sap of a dog. A kind of gentle giant with a lovely temperament. He lives to worship food and television, and particularly enjoys sport and beer commercials. If you don’t believe me, perhaps I’ll bring in a video of him licking the television screen.
Bailey would eat anything you put down in front of him. Nuclear waste, human waste. He’s not fussed. He’ll eat it all with gusto and the unquestioning trust of a child.
Bailey, however, is thicker than the walls of a bomb-proof bunker. Bless him though, he’s none the worse for it and effortlessly likeable.
Bracken, by contrast, appears to be a midget, but is in actual fact, a normal sized dog. Unlike Bailey, at no point has she shown any interest in our baby, Joshua. She’s not put out by his arrival, and doesn’t feel any further down the pecking order in any way. I imagine though she does feel a certain passing sympathy for the dog.
That’s right. Bracken thinks she’s human. I’ve seen it before in animals. With this one, were she human, she’d be someone like Professor Moriarty. A brilliant mind, ultimately compelled to bring doom and misfortune on others to make the world a better place for themselves.
As it stands, she showboats that personality and brain by outdoing Bailey at every possible turn. And because he’s a mug, he simply lets her.
Loveable though, and exceptionally cute.
And there you have them. In a nutshell. Bailey and Bracken.
Now – what I’d like to happen on this page is for you to tell me about your pets, and when I find some that I like, I may try and do a swap of some kind.
Pictures….stories…..all welcome.
And whilst you do that – I’ll keep you up to date with this pair.
In retrospect, somewhat stupidly, I made the decision to feature her on our breakfast show, making her a part of it. After a few flippant remarks and asides it became abundantly obvious she was waaaaaaay more popular than I was, and it kind of snowballed from there. We got her to come along to events with us on local holidays, which were her Public Holly-Days, (see what we did there).
People used to send her birthday cards and Christmas gifts. It was crazy.
She was a great dog too. Everything, and I mean, every, aspect of her nature was brilliant. She suited us very well, and I think she quite liked us back.
The down side of this little tale though, is that she developed cancer. Without going into too much detail of what was a thoroughly rotten time, and quite lengthy period at that, I had to come in to the show one day and tell the audience we’d had to put Holly out of her pain.
I felt like John Noakes with Shep on Blue Peter.
It was then I swore blind I would never, ever, in a million years go through anything like that ever again.
Never say never.
Meet Bailey and Bracken.
Holly died in December. We lasted until the end of January. My wife thought we should have a period where we lived without a dog, not rush into anything. I reluctantly agreed. In the end, and she’ll probably disagree, she was the one looking at ads in the paper for a new puppy.
We saw one, which was for a litter of Border collie pups on a farm near Rothienorman. Turns out it was a really small litter. There were only three pups. The farmer had decided to keep one himself to work the property. The other two were for sale. I’ll be honest -it was a no-brainer. We automatically fell in love with Bailey. He was like the photo-negative of your standard Border collie. 95 percent white colouring. The only black, one splotch on his back, and the rest over his eyes like a burglar’s mask.
The dog which the farmer was keeping was a far more traditional looking Border, pleasant enough looking, but not for sale.
Which left the runt of the litter.
She really wasn’t much to look at. Scratchy features, eyes which looked full of sleepy crumbs. Clearly we hadn’t caught her on her best day.
Having paid the farmer, I was ready to leave and set about trying to put our new puppy in the back of the car. It was as I lifted the little ball of fluff. I noticed he had the paws of a lion cub and began to worry he was going at some stage to grow into them. It was a fleeting thought, one dismissed from my mind as I conducted the standard ‘have we got everything’ check one does when you’re about to get in the car to set off on a journey.
It was only then I noticed Lynne was lagging behind.
Let me save you the bother of the next ten minutes of persuasion. I lost. I always knew I was going to. I don’t know why I tried. I certainly shouldn’t have bothered. I thought it was madness, and on that point I was right.
Needless to say, we left a farmer with twice as much money, and half the bother he thought he was going to get from us.
We also left with a dog that was destined to grow to the size of a small polar bear wearing a burglar’s mask, and a little runt of a pup who was destined to grow into a beautiful collie dog that no-one could ever have imagined.
Both were sick in the back of the car on the way home.
Both played their own part in eating it back up again before we got there.
In their time they’ve completely chewed apart various rooms in our house. Cut us off the telephone by eating the cables on at least three separate occasions, pulled the curtains from the wall and the curtain poll down on top of them in the process, and neither of them will ever replace Holly in our hearts.
But we love them.
If I’m going to be completely honest with the advice here; never buy two dogs from the same litter, and if you do, never get a brother and sister. Not unless you’re planning on separating them at a certain age with a concrete perimeter.
Alternatively, you could just opt for the same method we did and go for the pom-
poms in a jar route with your boy dog.
So here they are. Bailey and Bracken. What can I tell you about them and their personalities?
Bailey is a huge big loveable sap of a dog. A kind of gentle giant with a lovely temperament. He lives to worship food and television, and particularly enjoys sport and beer commercials. If you don’t believe me, perhaps I’ll bring in a video of him licking the television screen.
Bailey would eat anything you put down in front of him. Nuclear waste, human waste. He’s not fussed. He’ll eat it all with gusto and the unquestioning trust of a child.
Bailey, however, is thicker than the walls of a bomb-proof bunker. Bless him though, he’s none the worse for it and effortlessly likeable.
Bracken, by contrast, appears to be a midget, but is in actual fact, a normal sized dog. Unlike Bailey, at no point has she shown any interest in our baby, Joshua. She’s not put out by his arrival, and doesn’t feel any further down the pecking order in any way. I imagine though she does feel a certain passing sympathy for the dog.
That’s right. Bracken thinks she’s human. I’ve seen it before in animals. With this one, were she human, she’d be someone like Professor Moriarty. A brilliant mind, ultimately compelled to bring doom and misfortune on others to make the world a better place for themselves.
As it stands, she showboats that personality and brain by outdoing Bailey at every possible turn. And because he’s a mug, he simply lets her.
Loveable though, and exceptionally cute.
And there you have them. In a nutshell. Bailey and Bracken.
Now – what I’d like to happen on this page is for you to tell me about your pets, and when I find some that I like, I may try and do a swap of some kind.
Pictures….stories…..all welcome.
And whilst you do that – I’ll keep you up to date with this pair.
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