Recently a friend asked if we would have taken on TG if we had known how big he was going to get. Who can tell? When you buy a dog as a puppy you're not quite sure how big their going to become but you have the opportunity to train them in your ways from the start. On the other hand when buying a dog from a Rescue Centre size is less unpredictable but behaviour is very uncertain.
We knew that TG was going to be bigger than breed standard and had some idea of his potential size. He is bigger than any dog we've had before but we have had the opportunity to train him from the start. His training has gone OK, he is great fun, really good and we wouldn't change him or anything about him. He is the happy, fun-loving, amusing, thoroughly nice dog that it said on the tin.There are inevitably hiccoughs. Recently we have lost him four times up in the hills near the house. He just sneaks off, then you see the deer running across the field, then you see TG following in hot pursuit. No amount of whistling or calling can break his concentration - it's his nature as a scent hound to follow the scent of large game. I have left him behind, come home, then walked back to meet him coming down the hill when he has either lost the scent or the deer has gone to ground. We have had the telephone call. "We have your dog. He's in the front garden looking lost." and have gone to collect him.
The dog is quite unrepentant however so we have stopped taking him on that particular walk at the moment until the deer go higher up into the hills.
He loves to cuddle and despite his size will climb onto a convenient lap given half a chance.
Sometimes his habit of eating the junk mail can be useful but recently he ate one side of a Christmas Lunch menu that a colleague had ordered. It was really embarrassing for PL to have to ring the person and explain the situation - made even worse as the person had forgotten what he had ordered!!!
TG also ate the 'don't want it' side from a Boden order causing the use of lots of sellotape. The Boden staff must have had a laugh at the explanation for the state of the returned form.
We hope that TG's mum would be as proud of him as he is of her with her exceptional winning ways in the show ring that we read about. TG has a lot to live up to and, one year on, he is doing very nicely thank you.
