It's been quite a week in Gitaland. Last Tuesday I was asked to be a Trustee of the branch of the charity with which I've volunteered since 2013. This nomination came out of nowhere and I was hugely flattered by it. I'm not sure exactly what I'll bring to the table...

Oscar's first night with us, almost 15 years ago, was of its time. Totally inexperienced in the language of dog, we left our poor puppy, separated from his parents and litter siblings for the first time, alone downstairs in his crate to cry all night. Actually I have...

I'm delighted to announce that we brought home our new puppy today. Meet Fergus, Gemswin You're In My Heart, who is a flatcoated retriever puppy and 10 weeks old tomorrow. I felt terrible parting him from his litter sister and large extended flatcoat family but it's...

We are now into our second week of wrangling about what to call our impending puppy and, frankly, it's doing my head in. What started out as a fun exercise has turned into a massive eyeroll for me. Oscar was named for Oscar Peterson so we first decided to continue...

Honestly I was in no hurry to do the puppy thing again. I've had that experience once; it was hard work and I had no desire to repeat it. Besides which, there are countless hundreds of thousands of poor, unwanted, homeless dogs in the world, failed by humans or in...