Baby Ronnie the WHQ Puppy
Chapter one - Animals are cool & they enrich your life…
Here at World Headquarters, we have a long history of using a variety of animals in our publicity, so we thought it was about time we got us a mascot.
This is our little baby, Ronnie. She is a Pharoah Hound puppy & will be featuring on many of our flyers from now on. Above is her hanging with the 13 other members of her litter, not long after she was born. Below is the first snap we took of her once we got her home, in bed, taken at the end of January.
As you can see here she is still just a little baby, but she’ll grow, along with the Club, over the next 15 or so years.
Her ears (which as you can see in the photo above were all floppy…) suddenly started to stand up like some kind of crazy & astonishing bat… This happened one ear at a time (as demonstrated in these photos below, taken in the first week of February).
First it was her right ear…
But her left stayed all floppy…
When we got home at last one night, from our weekends shenanigans, we were very pleased to see that her second ear was playing ball & had just started to stand up. Her first one was now up like a proper batwing & for a moment we thought the second one might not go for it… But, check this snap taken at 6.30 on a Sunday morning!! (February 7th), hilarious!
This is one of her really early snaps, pre batlugs…
Here she is on one of her first trips out, sporting her rather fetching little jerkin that she wore, as she was little & did not have any fat to keep the cold out.
In just a few weeks she went from this little cheeky individual pictured here…
To the stately young hound pictured here, monkeying around at the beach…
She has sprouted up & it seems like you can almost see her growing.
She just gets longer & longer every day & has developed a kinda weird, long necked, mountain lionesque look, which you can see her rocking in this little snap below…
She was now eating so much, we thought it was time she started work to earn her keep. So this was her first modelling assignment, starring in our April advertisment in the Crack Magazine.
She enrolled in puppy school for a few weeks with all her doggie chums. Here she is being bad, trying to eat out of a bin when she should be getting ready…
Her puppy classes were at Croft Medical Centre in Cramlington, where she hooked up with all her pals. They are really good classes & if you are thinking of getting a puppy, you should check them out.
She loved it & won an award for ‘Most Playful Puppy’ when she graduated.
She had such a great time that she is now weighing up her options & is considering staying in further education & taking an agility class.
This was her second modelling job, for the front of one of our Summer flyers.
She can be such a little naughty, but she is also such a complete cutie & we all just love her to bits x.
Chapter two - Growing up, traumas & travels…
One of Ronnie’s favourite places is the woods. She is a hound so she just loves the whole outdoors groove.
She regularly goes on epic walks to far away places where she can run wild & free & just enjoy being an active young dog, out & about in nature.
Summer has been good & Ronnie has been up on the Northumberland moors.
She really is growing up & is starting to lose a little of her puppy face & evolving into a really beautiful elegant girl. She seems to look like different things at different times, but most often she looks like a little kind of pointy eared deer.
Here she is doing her ‘Queen of all I survey’ routine up in the mountains…
When she was little she hated water, but now mainly by copying from behaviour she has seen other dogs exhibit, she has got over that & has a paddle & even a swim if it’s nice & sunny, to cool off while she is out on her important manouvers.
At around 6 months, we decided to take Ronnie to the Vet to have her spayed. She was from a litter of 14 & as there is no way we could look after that many dogs, we thought it was best. Her pups would have sold for a small fortune, but we aren’t into that & wouldn’t have been able to bear seperating her from them, so off we went. First, the Vet shaved her leg…
Then her tummy & made this great big cut & took out all of her reproductive bits…
Looks gruesome, but it’s astounding how quickly she recovered & was up & around within a day. She got a little bit of an infection in her wound, but the Vet gave her some bomb antibiotics & she was right back on form & running around off her lead within a week or so.
Now her scar has healed to the point where you can hardly see it & all her hair has grown back.
At same time the last of her little needle teeth fell out & all her big, grown up teeth came in. What a fine set of pearly white gnashers she has!
She utilises them for the destruction of her toys & anything else she can get her sticky little mits on.
Here she is performing her speciality trick of getting a squeaky toy, then disemboweling it to remove all the stuffing, to get at the little plastic squeaker inside.
In July she went to Suffolk on her holidays camping. The weather was boiling hot & she had a good root around the countryside. She was up first thing crack of dawn & on the go all day.
She camped on a working farm & met all the animals like dogs, horses, cats, chickens, pigs & a litter of 8 black labrador puppies like this little guy.
It was a great experience for her that really broadened her horizons & she just ran around exploring all day, trying to hunt for things to chase, or to chase her.
She got a new collar so she would be all smart for her holidays & she wore it when she went to the beach.
She had a running feud with the cows out the back of where she camped as they laughed at her ears, so she decided to go on a concerted program of mashing them up at every possible opportunity.
She also went to the massive forest & messed on with great big pine cones, which is one of her favourite things to do.
There are so many different natural enviroments in Suffolk that it’s doggie paradise. She went to swamps, beaches, fields, forests, bars, everywhere.
The countryside caper wore her out & she liked to settle in at night for a great big nap. She got a big cage specially for her holidays so that she wouldn’t wander off every night & eat all the animals on the farm. She absolutely loved it & at the end of each day she would go in for her nap & we would cover it with blankets. So she was all in the dark like a little parrot & had her own proper little warm snugglie den, to camp in.
Now she is back from her hols so you may see her on her walks out & about around Newcastle. Be sure to stop her & say hello if you do, as she is the the most friendly dog you could possibly hope to meet & would love show you a demonstration of how to wag a tail properly.