This should be fun (or not)

Arri arrives today. Arri, aka Harry Winston, is a five months old black Labrador belonging to Bob and Lynne. They want a short break, so Arri comes to stay. He is called Arri because in France the first letter of a dog's name is determined by the year in which he is born. This year is letter A (so it's Arri rather than Harry). As an aside, our Max is officially known as V'Max because he was born in 2004 which was a V year (they don't bother with the letters between V and A). In fact his full name is V'Max du Murier de Sordeille. When the breeder asked us what we were going to call him we said Max, he looked a little puzzled (we obviously didn't realise) and he said OK, he can be registered as V'Max. He paused for a second and then his face lit up as he said, 'What a great name!' We then looked even more puzzled until he explained that Yamaha build a motorbike called the V-Max, which is somewhat legendary. He was obviously a fan, and the name suggests high power and good looks, the height of cool. But I digress. Max and Harry get on really well and can play for hours, until they drop, so hopefully they will both have a great time for the next few days. I'm not so sure about us.

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If the first half hour is anything to go by, we are going to be exhausted just watching the dogs play. Nothing changes as time goes by, so we decide to take the dogs for a walk to tire them out, and we call round to see if Tom and Katie want to go as well. They do, so we all walk up to the fossil field nearby. The dogs play non-stop whilst we check out the fossils (mostly ammonites), and they only stop to lie in the shade. As usual, we find lots of fossils and spend a very pleasant 'discovery' hour trying to guess the nature of the creatures that we have found. Gill, (Tom and Katie's mum) kindly offers lunch on the way back so we return home replete and a little 'tired and emotional'. The dogs continue to play (for a total of 12 hours) and finally collapse at about 10.00 pm totally exhausted. So are we!