I have never been known for being the most sensible person on this planet. But I think I've truly lost it this time.

When we went to Tom's brother's in Texas for Thanksgiving, Tom fell in love with Curt's English Bulldog, Winston. It was so funny to see them sitting together on a couch. If ever a dog & human looked alike, in my mind, that was Tom & Winny (except that at 6'4" in every direction, Tom would make rather a LARGE bulldog). We did think about dognapping Winny, but thought better of it as Curt truly loves his dog.

We had talked about getting a dog of our own but I enjoy the freedom I have to bounce around the world & get on aeroplanes to UK, Europe or where ever I can find an excuse to go. So it was always something we would consider doing at some future point. Then, for some bizarre reason which I have yet to determine, I started looking online for breeders around here.There are some (to me) very strange ideas out there. Did you know that you can get a pouppy & it will be SENT to you without you ever having met either it, the breeder or anything? To me, that's just seems wrong. Surely you need to get to meet both breeder & puppy to see if you're all compatible? Or is that me just being too soft?

Anyway, turns out there was a breeder who had had 3 litters of bulldogs in Vineland, South Jersey. Vineland is a place we go to fairly often as we used to live there before we moved to New Zealand & my 2 best (American) girlfriends live there. So I suggested to Tom that as we were going down anyway, we ought to go & have a look at them. When we got there the lady only had one female left. Tom has his heart set on a boy as he has only girls & always fancied a son. The puppy was absolutely adorable though. Even he thought she was cute. The lady told us that up the road a friend of hers also bred Bulldogs & rang her to see if she had any dogs there. She did. There were several there. One wee one, Libby (our 4 year old) absolutely fell in love with. He was the runt of the litter & had a cleft palatte. Libby never let him down the whole time we were there.

Tom found his son & of course, although we had absolutely no real intention of getting a puppy at this time (guess who's going to be doing all the hard work!!) we got one. We then had to come up with a name. We are very proud to say we think we have found the perfect name for him. Obviously it had to be something British sounding & we have settled on Ponsonby. On so many levels this name is perfect. There is a film with Bill Murray in it called "The Man who knew too little" Extremely funny. In it, there is a character called Ponsonby. After some research we discovered that Ponsonby was the Private Secretary to Queen Victoria (so that appealed to Snowflake - Victoria). Another Ponsonby wrote books about the First World War (one of my interests) & finally Ponsonby is an area in Auckland, a place I loved living above all others to date! So the name was perfect.

Now we have got ourselves signed up for puppy training & are getting the house sorted for our new addition. I must be mad!! I love dogs & animals in general, but to me a dog has to be at least knee height when fully grown. Ponsonby is never going to be the size of a "proper" dog but he is cute.

More on the fun & games of puppy ownership later no doubt.Please feel free to give me advice. I've never had a puppy before. I had a Welsh Springer Spaniel who I adored. We used to go for wonderful walks in Snowdonia where I lived at the time. Can't see a legless dog walking up mountains somehow. mind you I'd be hard pushed to find any in New Jersey anyway!!