Photographs

You'll find my Day Zero photographs are now on Flickr. The address of my Flickr Account is http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinwhall/

The Chronicles of Jasper, Day Zero

So here we are, ten minutes to five in the morning and here I am writing my blog. Well, I might as well. I have been up all night and it's now so late that it is just about Morning.

This is Jasper. I keep thinking that I just might start an entirely new blog and call it "The Chronicles of Jasper" but can I really keep two blogs going when I often seem to have a problem with one.

OK. Start with the back story. We had two amazing Spaniels called Rufus & Daisy. Daisy died two years and three days ago and Rufus died one year and thirty three days ago. For a long time we contemplated the fact that their deaths might mark the end of our dog owning years. Then, as the year following Rufus death went along we began to realise that we wanted another dog.

We missed out on two rehoming dogs, but that is another story. Then eight weeks ago we saw an advert on the Internet for some new puppies in Carnforth, not very far from the Auld Grey Town.

To cut a long story shorter, a long story that I will tell if I get round to starting Jasper's own blog, Jasper arrived yesterday morning. That's him in the photograph at the top of the page.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable day. Took a lot of photographs which I will put on Flickr when I get a chance. We have got a crate and decided that we were going to try Crate Training with Jasper, so we introduced him to his crate, just like the book says. While we had lunch, and later dinner, Jasper went in his crate. Both time he howled for five minutes and then settled down. That didn;t seem too bad. The problem came when we settled him down for sleeping at night. We put him in his crate, covered the crate with a blanket and went to bed. And Jasper began to cry, and cry and cry. The book says that you must ignore the crying, that you have to let him adapt, but I guess it was just too new or something. I could have lived with the howling, but our house is a semi and it was the idea that it was not just us that was being kepr awake by Jasper, but Grahame and Mavis next door as well. He howled steadily and without pause from 10.30 pm until 2.30 am.

At that point I had had enough. The book says that you must ignore the crying, or the dog has won. Well, if that is true I guess that Jasper has won, but we shall have to see. Personally, I think that it was a mistake to expect him to settle in on his first day with us. Poor lamb was lonely on his first day away from his mother and his litter. I think that we will just have to have another think about this. Maybe when Pat gets up in about three more hours, I can get a few hours of sleep to catch up, but lets face it, I'm not exactly doing a lot to get radically tired. I'll cope!