Introducing Our New Adventure Sidekick: Bonnie The Border!

You might have noticed that, between all the Japan content, I went quiet for a while at the beginning of summer.

I was busy with our trips to Cyprus and Luxembourg, catching up with everything at work, and two family events, but then one thing took over everything in our lives with undivided attention: we got a puppy!!!!!

LOOK AT HER. Her name is Bonnie and she’s a gorgeous wee Border terrier who we already love fiercely.

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We’ve wanted a dog for years, but sadly a commitment of that size just didn’t fit into our lifestyle. We knew as soon as we settled down in Edinburgh that now would be the time – but we decided to wait until after Japan. Which, let me tell you, made postponing Japan for four years EVEN MORE frustrating!

I kept an eye on ads shortly after we got back from Japan to get an idea of what to look for – I don’t know about you, but I am very wary of dog ads and unruly breeders. I think the thing I was most nervous about was finding a wrong ‘un, handing our money over and ending up with a dog with health problems that we should have spotted signs for instantly or asked the right questions.

Within a couple of weeks, I found an ad for a litter of border terriers just half an hour from us. I’m not sure how I missed the ad, but it was 11 days old (the ad, not the litter), and I figured I might as well contact them because she would most likely come back to say they’d all gone – we weren’t in a hurry as we had quite a busy month lined up in June.

She didn’t.

She came back almost immediately to tell me there were two girls left.

Oh no.

I told Ash, and after about 30 seconds, we decided to go and view them the following evening.

Obviously that was the end of it, and we fell in love with all three puppies (the breeder planned to keep one, hence only being two available, but she didn’t mind which – I think that’s a good sign!). We arrived armed with a list of questions to cover our bases, and the breeder answered all of them before we’d even asked. She was super knowledgeable about everything dog and isn’t a prolific breeder, and honestly we couldn’t have asked for someone more perfect! It was like fate.

So of course, we chose Bonnie. She was named “Bitch 3” on the paperwork, and her Kennel Club name is suitably ridiculous. In fact, we couldn’t choose which puppy we wanted, and picked her purely based on the fact she had an adorable white toe (which has now disappeared and is just the same colour as the rest of her) and picked her up the following week.

Anyway, Bonnie has just turned six months old last week. She was born while we were in Japan! How perfect is that? Unfortunately her birthday is the day after Ash’s! We got her at the start of June, so we’ve officially had her for more than half of her life.

She has been the perfect little puppy. She settled in straight away, even putting herself to bed in her new crate on her first night, and has slept through the night from day one. She was fully toilet trained within two weeks, and even while confined to the garden before her vaccinations, she befriended half the local dogs (I believe she’s very enthusiastically befriended the other half since walkies began). She’s gone from being too wee to get herself up on the sofa, to leaping up and using the back cushions as a springboard during zoomies.

She’s always happy to see me when I get home from work, and her new favourite spot is on top of the couch, watching out of our window at life going past. She never barks, otherwise I’d put a stop to that – instead, I’ve put a cushion there so she can lay there in contentment. She has an absolute obsession with socks – she WILL find a sock even in places you don’t think there are any socks – and she loves her doughnut more than anything.

She also sleeps in the most ridiculous positions imaginable.

That photo of her with Ash is one of my FAVOURITE pictures! What is she even doing?!?

She is the sweetest dog and loves absolutely everyone – and everyone loves her! (Except our neighbour’s dog, who should be her best friend – booo!)

It does mean a slightly different travel lifestyle in the future. I’m still bouncing around on some solo trips for the rest of the year, but next year will be much slower, focusing back onto trips within Scotland that we can take Bonnie on.

We are lucky in that my parents are total dog-lovers and have never not had a dog in their lives (Bonnie gets on with their dog like a house on fire!) so they’re more than happy to Bonnie-sit, but they’re also three hours away so it’s not ideal and I don’t want to ask too often. Mum calls Bonnie her grand-dog, and I call Dad her grand-paw. We are not quite at the “fur baby” stage…!

(In sadder news, their older dog was put to sleep just THREE DAYS before we picked up Bonnie. It was an absolute rollercoaster of dog news in our family that week!! I cried for a full day – thankfully working from home that day – and knowing Bonnie would never get to meet her just made it worse.)

Thankfully Bonnie was the perfect antidote.

This is NOT going to turn into a dog blog, and I won’t be making Bonnie the focus, but she’ll certainly be featuring a fair amount in my Scotland content and general updates!

You’ll notice she’ll look different by the time we start going on trips with her too – she’s already lost a lot of her black coat and she’ll most likely lose all of it soon. She’s definitely still in puppy mode, so it’ll be interesting to see what her “final form” looks like – I’m going to miss her multi-coloured fur though!

It’s fair to say we have found a new love in our lives. Bonnie is certainly a character and I can’t wait to share some adventures with her!