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Tribe and Tide: Navigating Island
Tribe and tide
NAVIGATING ISLAND FAMILY LIFE
By Emma Elobeid Pictures Timi Eross
The big news is that we have a dog. And though she’s only a baby, even at four months old her black panther paws and supermodel legs are more gangly giantess than petite pup. Life with Rosie is a Wonderfully Great Adventure; full of boundless energy and infinite affection, she makes everything, well, rosier.
It’s true what they say: having a puppy is as close as it gets to having another child. Only this time, I have happily outsourced the night shifts to my husband, who spent seven weeks sleeping downstairs to settle her in. In fact, the day before
Rosie came home, our household was triply blessed with the arrival of three new baby guinea pigs, which we named ‘Posy, Pudding and Pi’, in a nicely rounded finale to the flock.
Family walks now take twice as long.
Not because Rosie is slow – quite the contrary, her gallop gathers at pace, ears flailing in the sea air, four white socks blurring as one – but because everyone wants to stop and comment; a phenomenon I can only imagine will increase as she grows (and grows). Remarks are chalked up on our ‘Great Dane bingo’ card, with ten points for ‘She’ll be big!’ and ten for ‘Have you got a saddle yet?’ She seems to love the attention though, and I have a feeling she’ll grow into her eventual ‘Biggest Dog in the Village’ badge with pride. And though it’s been a year of daily
walks around these now very familiar looping trails, she’s made us see our world through new – great big brown puppy dog – eyes. Having made it through the first few squelching weeks of late-winter mud, we’re finally being rewarded with all the joys of Island dog ownership in springtime. Rosie must have missed the doggy memo on the joys of stick-hunting, preferring the rather more sensory delight of a single crunchy leaf or sorry-looking broken shell. She and our youngest share a common compulsion to free the field stones that the great spring thaw has pushed up from their earthly beds and carry them home. She is particularly partial to catkins, cleavers (colloquially known as ‘sticky weed’) and – most hilariously of all – fluffy dandelion clocks, which is inevitably met with delighted cries of ‘Oh Rosie!’ from the boys. It’s really no wonder she loves spring so much: dogs have dichromatic vision and can only discern blues and yellows, which
Giant’s Causeway: Rosie the Great leads her tribe with pride
explains her equal love of daffodil heads, gorse flowers and Easter socks alike. I can only imagine what she will make of Borthwood’s blanket of bluebells!
Thanks to the brilliantly reassuring advice of Paul from Cottage Canines, our ‘training’ so far has focused on the basic commands. Puppies need gentle guidance of course – balls are for playing with; scarves are not – but as Paul explains, our main philosophy for these vital first few months (and the rest of her life) is showering her with love, building trust, and instilling a sense of unconditional belonging. Oh, and moving all the Lego upstairs.
