Meet Mishka - she was basically a potato

Hello, big world. This is Mishka, and she has been on this earth for seven whole months. She has opinions about squeaky toys, strong feelings about lambs (we'll get to that), and absolutely elite recall - unless there's another dog. Then, respectfully, all bets are off. Oh, and cheese. She has very strong feelings about cheese.

She came into the world courtesy of Arthunder Tollers, a rather distinguished Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever kennel. Her full, very official kennel club name is Arthunder Forever After - which, if you ask us, suits a dog of her calibre perfectly. We picked her up in November, and apparently, when we first saw her, the word we used was "potato".

A jacket potato, we hoped. With lots of cheese.

She now resides in Oxfordshire, which is - and we cannot stress this enough - exactly the right county for a dog with a name like Arthunder Forever After. She fits in very well here. There are fields. There are wellies. There are people (one of us) who say things like "supper" without irony. It suits her.

The lamb diet, as it happens, also suits her - though that's less about being posh and more about the fact that we're currently investigating whether she has a food allergy. More on that later. For now, just know that she is a seven-month-old Toller in Oxfordshire, eating lamb at Easter, and doing absolutely fine about all of it.

Seven months on and she is a very different dog. Long legs, a magnificent russet coat, and quite a lot of energy for her humans to handle at times. She has discovered that the world is full of wonderful things: fetch, more fetch, squeaky toys that sound like small animals in distress (delightful), and the incomparable joy of running very fast for absolutely no reason.

Her toy collection is her pride and joy. Squeaky ones are a particular passion - the louder, the better. We may feel differently about this, but we have not yet revoked her squeaky toy privileges, so she considers that a win.

And cheese. We should mention cheese again. It is her favourite treat, her greatest motivator, and, we are convinced, the primary reason she learned to roll over so quickly. If you need her to do literally anything, the answer is cheese. This is not a negotiation.

She works hard. The fetch, the tricks, the squeaking - it takes it out of you. So when she sleeps, she sleeps with full commitment. Specifically, she sleeps on her back, legs in the air, dignity entirely optional.

We are told this is a Toller thing. Apparently they are known for it. We prefer to think of it as her signature move - a reminder that she is, at her core, a dog who is very secure in herself. We find it very funny. She appears to find our reaction very funny. We are all having a great time.

Her Friends

Mishka's best friend in the entire world is Bella. She is a dachshund. She is very small and very black and completely convinced she runs things. She does not run things. But Mishka lets her think she does, because Mishka is a gracious and emotionally intelligent dog.

Then there is Monty. Monty is a Golden Retriever, and he is - how do we put this - a lot. Not in a bad way. In a he-is-very-large-and-Mishka-used-to-fit-under-him way. He came into her life when she was still very much in the potato era, and the size difference was, frankly, humbling. He has since become something like a big brother. A much, much bigger brother. The kind who takes up most of the sofa and doesn't apologise for it. We admire that about him.

Monty and Mishka share a friend in Sox, who is a horse. Monty and Sox technically belong to the same human, which - if you follow the logic - makes them siblings. They look absolutely nothing alike, but we have met humans before and we don't think resemblance is really how they organise things. We choose not to question it. What we will say is that Sox is very large and has an excellent mane, and Monty is very large and has excellent ears, and Mishka loves them both enormously.

She is, by any objective measure, extremely well-trained. Here is a partial list of things she can do on command:

• Sit
• Down
• Stay
• Safety
• Heel
• Go get it
• Drop it
• Roll over
• Spin

And most importantly - recall. She comes back every time she's called. Mostly. Almost always. The only genuine exception is when she spots another dog, at which point her brain briefly reroutes all available processing power toward the singular goal of saying hello. We cannot explain this. It is simply who she is.

We should note that cheese has been instrumental in the acquisition of several of the above skills. Roll over, in particular, was a cheese-motivated achievement. She is not ashamed of this.

The lamb situation

She is, at present, eating exclusively lamb. This is not a lifestyle choice — we are on a bit of a detective mission. We are trying to figure out whether she has a food allergy, which means she is on a single-protein diet while we investigate.

We will admit that "lamb in Oxfordshire at Easter" does sound quite deliberate. Very seasonal. Very local. Very Mishka. But truly, it is science. Delicious, delicious science.

Updates on the Great Allergy Investigation will follow in due course. The dream outcome, obviously, is that she can one day eat cheese again without anyone raising an eyebrow. Fingers crossed. Paws crossed. Everything crossed.

So. That's Mishka. Seven months old, Arthunder Forever After by name, chaos gremlin by nature. We have big plans for this blog — walks to document, tricks to perfect, a size rivalry with Monty to maintain, and at least one more horse friendship to cultivate.

Come back soon. She'll probably be doing something excellent. You can also follow her somewhat daily dispatches over on Instagram at @mishkas.little.life - we post there too, mostly fetch and sleeping.

🐾 Mishka's Pawrents 🐾