My dog is pretty adorable

The day after I got to Newfoundland, we got Finlay. He's a rescue beagle, from a shelter called Beagle Paws, which takes in beagles from all over, and sets them up with nice people. Beagles have a long history in Newfoundland as hunting dogs more than anything else. They also face a good amount of prejudice. Folks will keep them underfed and penned up outside -- the better to chase bunny rabbits and the like.



We don't know much about Finlay. He's a year and a half or so, and scared of doors, canoe paddles, and sudden movement. His name means "fair haired warrior," or alternately, "the brave one." Because he's so skittish, we've been pretty slow with the training (his being a beagle certainly doesn't help matters in that quarter) but things are coming along slowly. He doesn't pull quite so much anymore, and he's getting pretty good at sitting down. This is a new development, one he's pretty proud of. When we go out for walks these days, he'll look back at me, expectantly, as if saying "now is there something you'd like me to do?"

Since I've been "working" from home, we spend most of our time together -- me typing, him curled up on the floor. Every hour or so we take a trip downstairs for some fresh tea and a treat.

Our house is right on a river-side walking path (the subject of another post, one of these days) so we get to spend a lot of time walking down by the river. Finlay looks at the ducks, and I wish that the air temperature were above 40, and that the river wasn't full of old concrete blocks.

We were fostering Finlay for the first six weeks I was here, but on Saturday, after a morning trip to wal-mart and an afternoon playing bananagrams with some grad school folks who also happen to be fostering some beagles (yes, it was a puppy play date) we went back to beagle paws and signed some papers and gave them a check. Finlay is now Our Problem. Hopefully by next summer he will be brave enough to go canoeing happily, and trained enough to spend a little time off his lead. Until then, we're rarely separated by more than 6 feet, and I'm alright with that.