Happy birthday, Edgar!

So it’s Edgar’s fourth birthday today.

I can’t believe this once little pup is now a grown-up boy.

There’s nothing he likes better than chasing after a ball and bringing it back to me, placing it at my feet.

Sometimes, he’ll launch himself skywards to catch it in the air. It’s quite a spectacle.

Meanwhile, Ruby stares and stares and stares at insects, birds and, when we’re in France, geckos – pointing and ready to pounce. Here she is, posing in the poppies.

Ruby the Korthals Griffon is a rescue dog, who came to us at 11 months after spending most of her puppy time in a crate. She’s now seven-and-a-half and still nuts.

She’s obsessed with pacing the boundaries and, given half a chance, will head off into the sunset and come back maybe an hour later, which is why she is not allowed off-lead unless she’s in the garden, in a secure field or on the beach at West Bay where sea defence boulders keep her penned in at each end.

Edgar came to us as a puppy from a nearby farm. We weren’t actually looking for a second dog but made the fatal mistake of going to see a friend’s litter, which were three-quarters Labrador and a quarter blue merle collie.

I ummed and ahed until I was told little Eddie – as he was known then – had been earmarked by a chap who lived in a town flat with no garden.

That might have been a ruse but it was enough to make up my mind. A dog like this would need to run.

So Eddie was renamed Edgar – a family name – and came to live with us.

He’s a loyal, loving boy and much more obedient than Ruby.

We do have to watch out for that Labrador tail which can whip a glass off a coffee table at five paces.

And he has inherited the Labrador gene of eating anything, which has its advantages in that he was much easier to train than his ‘auntie’, who is totally disinterested in food and is a bit of a lost cause.

Anyway, happy birthday Edgar, and here’s to many more of them.