This is NOT Murphy but it is a picture of an Irish Wolfhound, similar to Murphy.

This, however, IS Murphy. Thanks so much to @BiancaNicholas for sending me this picture, that she took in the woods this morning. She fell in love with him too. 

Murphy is no more than a puppy, really, but he’s huge. Our Oscar is accustomed to being the biggest dog in our local park, so he was bemused by Murphy the first time they met, and still a little wary of him.
An entire male, Oscar adores puppies and usually rolls on the ground to let them jump over him until they reach about 9 or 10 months old, when he feels it’s his dogly responsibility to teach them who’s boss. A quick growl or a bit of a hump will usually do. Dogs understand this: it’s not nasty, it’s just establishing a pecking order. Once they’ve done that, they just get on with their daily doggery.

But Oscar isn’t at all sure how to treat Murphy. He smells and behaves like a 14 month old pup but he’s ruddy huge!

As for Murphy: he just wants to play and socialise and have fun with all the other dogs. He’s only trying to be friendly and doesn’t understand that they’re running away because they’re frightened of this Goliath of canines. He truly seems to have no idea of his scale and this made me sad.

The other day I came across someone else walking an Irish Wolfhound and we got chatting as dog people do. I mentioned little Murphy and the man said that he’d just come from an Irish Wolfhound walking group. Murphy at last had some friends his own size. It’s not much of a diversity policy but you can’t have everything, I guess.