Real Pets: Flynn an English Pointer

Today it is all about pets and our beloved 4 legged friend the dog. So far the show and tell feature has been pretty cat heavy, so it’s great to break up the feline feature with a canine special! You will know Boho Life regular Laura well as she has written quite a few posts for me now, so today she is here to introduce her gorgeous English Pointer; Flynn. I remember when Laura got Flynn and have followed his journey via Facebook, twitter and instagram, so I am loving todays post and I hope you do to.

I’ll pass you over to Laura…….

Meet Flynn, a ‘lemon’ and white English Pointer. We got him from a local RSPCA centre 6 months ago, after I’d finally persuaded my husband to let me get a dog. I’ve always had dogs in my life growing up and to me a house doesn’t feel like a home without one.
We were hoping to get a little Labrador or Spaniel puppy, but thought it best to check out the RSPCA first, as there are always dogs out there that need a home. There were many dogs there but this little guy’s forlorn face looking through the kennel wire, softly whining, broke my heart a little.
We got him out of the kennel with one of the staff, and we sat on a bench to let him run around the yard. After the obligatory sniff around our feet he took one look at my husband and crawled straight up onto his lap and settled down for a snooze. ‘Does this mean we’re taking him home then?’ I said to my husband. ‘I think we’d better’ he said. And that was that.

The first week was hell, I’m not going to lie. My husband was away on business, and I had a nervous, puppy on my hands. For a week I couldn’t leave the room without him howling, I had to write letters of apology to the neighbours and he destroyed the kitchen door. He had never seen grass before let alone been on a lead, and wasn’t house-trained.
By the time my husband came home, however, Flynn had learnt to sleep in his bed in the kitchen, not to go upstairs and that the garden was his bathroom. I got his puppy jabs and started to train him on the lead. He does ‘sit’, ‘down’, ‘stay’, ‘come’ and ‘bed’ like he’s always known them.

Now? He’s nearing his first birthday and enjoys the following things: sleeping with all four legs out of his bed, yoghurt, running with me every morning, stalking next doors cat, pulling the yellow fluff off tennis balls, downwards facing dog pose whenever I stretch, bottles of any kind, radiators and log fires, anything warm and soft – especially knitted throws or sheepskin rugs, and practicing his pointing at everything that moves.
I try not to think about his life before us – how any person could ever treat any animal with such contempt or neglect I fail to understand. He was a bag of bones when we got him, and we’re still putting weight on him but just like any gangly teenager, until his legs stop growing he’s never going to fill out !