Finnegan is two.

Happy Birthday to my bestest mate says Hebe.
This is what I bought him

I quite like too. And following the Labrador Property Laws it's MINE too.

Water

Wet stuff, nice for plodging in.  I wish I could do this:

But I fell in the pond when I was very, very little (about 4 weeks old, Bean says) and now I'm not that keen if I can't have a foot on the ground.  Stop sniggering at the back, I know I'm a labrador and I'll plodge and plowter all day and love to cover you all in wet, green, partially solid wet stuff.  But, well, you can't help it can you? things that happen to you when you're a puppy scar you for life, same with fireworks. Oh well. Maybe one day, in the mean time I'll just keep on losing things at the bottom of ditches.

(more underwater dogs on The Guardian website)

Oh, Finnegan, you would choose today

The mercury dropped to almost -10 last night and, so far at least, hasn't got above -1. So, this morning Finnegan decided it would be the perfect day to wash teh dog house and back steps by standing in and then when he relaised it was a little chilly kicking over the neraly full water bucket. Half a gallon or more of water flowed, slowed and then stopped, sticking to the steps. eer helpful Mum brushed and mopped the water out of teh dog house and off the side of the back step - to deal with alter - dropping a towel on the top of the big puddle, overflowing and dripping down the steps onto the yard. Five minutes the towel is frozen solid to the step, the dog house is a skating runk and Finnegan tried a double salko onto the yard. Canines confined to the kitchen and armed with multiple towels, half a bag of rock salt, a couple of brushes and woolly gloves we tackled the rink. It took nearly half an hour to make it safe to exit the building even if the rink still had edges!

(Should have been posted on Saturday but the 'wonderful' ipad app refuses to work - technolcy ain't it wonderful? Ho hum.)

One of those days

it's been one of those weeks but today particularly.  Nothing simple or straightforward, everything needing extra attention and now Maia has just walked into a hot poker (straight out of Pig's embers) and sizzled her nose!  No yelp so not too bad, just another grey mark, poor girl.

It snowed!

And I love it...

But my beans don't seem to keen they got this machine in the move all the lovely snow and then went out in the big black car and left me.

Finnegan the foolish hooligan - chapter two

Well, more of Finn the Destroyer than hooligan.
In the last couple of days he has eaten / damaged / destroyed or otherwise chewed:

• three napkins
• two towels (only one of which was a dog towel)
  
• two television remote controls
• one invoice (not yet sent)
• one bottle of nail polish
• several emery boards
• the TV paper
• two pens
  
• part of the daily crossword
• the Past Times catalogue -we didn't want anything - well we don't think we did!
  
• the corners of virtually all the dog beds
• the edge of the hearth rug
• attempted three different sorts of chair
• the dining table - only half heartedly not sure if that's because people were present or he was tired
  
• tried and was (thankfully) defeated by a box of tissues
• one purse, leather (which distracted him from the money)

Do you think there might be something lacking in his diet?

(Yes, he says, I'll just eat this labrador's leg)

No, no, no

No, oh no. Why beans why? And most definitely, don't ever think about I'm never doing that!

Dog owners celebrate Halloween by dressing up their pets in bizarre costumes at parades - Telegraph