Raising Belle

The badger dog

The Great Pyrenees breed comes in two distinctive varieties. The best-known, and the most often seen at dog shows, are the spotless white walking snowdogs, whose big fluffy coats tend to render them invisible when herding sheep in the Pyrenees in a blizzard.

For those of us who don't often find ourselves wandering the high mountain passes of the Pic de Canigou or the Sierra de Guara, and have no real use for an invisible sheep-herding dog, a second possibility presents itself. The badger Pyr is named not because it enjoys eating worms, or because its hair makes excellent shaving brushes; the badger Pyr has patches of multi-coloured fur that sometimes mask its eyes and lend it a vaguely badgery elan. (It may be worth mentioning here that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the badger takes its name from - surprise ! - the word badge, a reference to the prominent white patch on its forehead).

We were lucky enough to have contacted Belle's breeder in time to have a choice of both all-white and badger puppies. It has to be said that the snowflake edition was very tempting. Sylvie had white Pyrs in her childhood, and she was prone to waxing lyrical about the sumptuous shininess of her mountainous heaps of four-legged fur.

Yet the moment I clapped eyes on the very first picture of Belle - taken within hours of her birth last July - my heart was lost. Her head was a mess of greys and browns, her bottom was striped black. She looked as though she'd dipped her head into a swirl of molten chocolate, then sat in a bucket of tar. The rest of her was flawless white. Belle was the girl for me.

As the photographs arrived each week from Gloria, Belle's breeder, no-one in the family was in any doubt that this would be our puppy. And as the weeks have passed - she's now three and a half months old - the badger has turned into a swan, so to speak. Her markings have begun to fade to blissful shades of grey, fawn and beige, with a few flecks of black.

She is beginning to acquire the stately bearing and majestic gaze for which the breed is reknowned (except when she's trying to tear Zelie's jeans off). If anything, her colouring enhances her traffic-stopping presence, and I'm happy to report that never before in my life have so many beautiful women been so keen to engage me in conversation as when I'm walking Belle.

Best of all, as winter approaches and we've already recorded the season's first snowfall, there's no danger she'll become invisible. Whichever end she sticks out of the snow, we'll be able to tell it's Belle.

 

Alpha to Zeta

The family hierarchy is especially important to Great Pyrenees pups, which have to be disabused of the notion that they are in charge and that the rest of the family exists solely for their amusement. This is fairly easy for adult humans to accomplish - there has never been any doubt who's the alpha male in our family, on account of the only male in the family being moi. And Sylvie makes a pretty good alpha female.

After that it gets complicated. While Delaney and Cleo (aka daughters numbers one and two) are big enough to command Belle's respect, Anouk (daughter number three) has had to learn the hard way that sometimes puppies need a firm hand in order not to become unmanageable.

At the opposite end of the scale, Belle and Zelie, (daughter number four, aged five), remain locked in a terrifying battle for supremacy. I fear at the moment it's a battle that Zelie is losing, despite our best efforts to persuade her not to start rolling in the mud with Belle, not to tease her with sticks or to run away from her screaming "Catch me, Belle". As the pictures below suggest, Belle is determined not to occupy last place in the family pecking order, and not only catches Zelie whenever instructed to do so, but then proceeds to eat her.

Three months tall

Our little white fluffball is growing up fast. She's three months old today, and is beginning to display signs of the mountainous lump of fur she is destined to become. At the park with Anouk at the weekend she found a plastic bottle, and lots of jumping and chasing ensued. Even we were stunned when we saw how tall she stands on her back legs.

It's pretty terrifying to think that she's still only a tiny puppy, and won't reach full size for months. It seems only a matter of time before Belle mistimes a jump, and Anouk is buried in a furball landslide.

Here are some shots from a lovely afternoon.

Belle ready for play:

The teasing begins:

Belle on the attack:

Anouk begins to realise that Belle is going to win:

To the victor, the bottle:

Finally, here's a then-and-now pair of shots with Sylvie. The first was taken just after Belle arrived, one month ago. You can clearly see that Sylvie is getting a lot wider. Sorry, I mean Belle is getting a lot taller....

Our puppy wants to be a zebra

I don't know why they call them mountain dogs. Our Great Pyrenean puppy is most definitely a swamp dog.

If there's a puddle, she'll jump in it. If there's a lake, she'll dive in it. If there's mud, she'll roll in it. Why have a shining fluffy white coat when you can look like a drowned zebra instead ?

The one saving grace of our dearly beloved (except when she's a walking mudball) Belle, is that Great Pyrenean fur comes with some kind of automatic self-cleaning mechanism that turns it white again fast (OK, it requires a bit of help from a wet towel). I just wish our children had the same kind of fur.

Fall

We went for a walk in Wheaton Park. If only they had all remained so clean and orderly.

Watch this space.

(Click on the pic for maximum cleanliness)

My puppy likes to read the newspaper

And then she eats it.

Warriors at rest

After a frenzied morning chasing each other through the forest, Anouk and Belle collapse in the family room to watch some TV.

I just hope they weren't watching Lassie.