A brief interlude with the Hound

This picture is for the reader from Berlin who wrote to say that although he's loved the book illustrations posted here over the last couple of weeks, he's been missing Tilly's presence. "Being city-bound myself," he writes, "I take great pleasure in my vicarious walks through the Devon countryside. I hope you are both all right." In fact, Tilly has been a bit under the weather (like me), which is why there have been so few Devon photographs of late. But we're both on the mend, and we'll be back to our woodland wanderings soon, I promise. (And Tilly's tumblr page will resume too.)

In meantime, she's curled up against me as I write this, purring. Yes, she actually purrs. Before Howard and I married, I'd only ever lived with cats -- but he was allergic to them, and crazy about dogs, so he was fond of quoting a line from the Proclaimers' song Let's Get Married: "You can get a cat just as long as it barks." Instead we got a dog who purrs, which makes both of us very happy.