JD has been with us for more than a week now – he came to us last Friday and each day it’s been wonderful to see his confidence grow. Rosie has decided that she likes him and they’re playing really nicely together.

For the first time in more than two weeks we managed to get Rosie to eat a meal last night. Since Archie’s death she’s been off her food. She’s gradually been eating a little more each day but still slowly and as though she doesn’t really want to and last night we managed to persuade her (still with some effort) that she should eat a whole meal. Phew. My beautiful baby girl is a bag of bones – let’s hope we can get her to put back on a bit of weight now.

JD has now been thoroughly tested with the chickens and they are now on their normal routine. We’d still probably not put him into the garden with them without one of us being around but that’s now only a matter of time we think.

Today’s test is a biggie. About five minutes after taking this photo we let him off the lead on the moor for the first time. We’ve been walking him in amongst ponies and sheep all week watching his reaction while on the lead and today we decided that with no sheep in sight, we’d let him off and see if he’d come back when called.

You know what? He passed the test with flying colours – came when called, walked right through a small herd of ponies without so much as batting an eyelid and in close proximity to us even without the constraints of a lead. The real test will come when we do the same when sheep are around but we didn’t see any today and anyway, one test on a walk is quite enough!

So, JD has settled really well. He's happy, she's happy, we're happy. The only fly in our ointment is that one of the dogs (can’t tell which) has made a mess in the kitchen overnight. Was it JD? It was certainly him skulking around looking guilty this morning but it’s very hard to be certain. Was it Rosie? Well – it might have been – she’s had a full tummy for the first time in a couple of weeks……

What did we do? A few reasonably gentle words of disappointment with both of them present, but no more. Let’s hope this is an end to it.

I so love this photo – my family…….