This is Buddy.

And if you have a spare day or two, you should go and check out his Instagram (buddythedappleddachshund). You may well get lost there. I did. And it’s not just the pictures. There’s something about the language around Buddy that delights. A chocolate dappled cream miniature dachshund.

Chocolate dappled cream. Isn’t that just like a poem? Better: add a pear, and you’ve got my favourite pudding, poires belle Helene. Happy sigh.

Anyhow – to work and no more daydreams over whether now is the right time in my life for a miniature dachshund (surely they don’t take up too much space?), or just time for more pudding (now that does take up too much space).

This is the photo they chose – I wonder if they agonised over it:

Stunning, no?

And off we go:

All done but the eyes.

Sometimes things are left till last because they are the best bits – as children eat food;  other times because they’re scary – as children treat homework. I think this was homework. And I think it stayed being homework for a long time. There was just so much riding on it – eyes being windows to the soul, never seemed so true as for this pup.

I wish there were some way of showing the thickness of the portrait around the eyes – showing just how many stitches went in – a lot of it hand stitching. I know I was pushing the needle through with my thimble, very very slowly at the end. Still, I think I got beyond the homework side of things at the end.

And then he was done, ready and waiting for his new home (/Liberty Tana lawn background).

The story doesn’t end here – but frustratingly, the pictures do. Buddy got a little bit lost in the piles building up for Christmas orders on the desk. And then, one whirlwind day – he was swept up, sewn onto his background, and sent out, before you could say “take a photo for goodness sake you ridiculous clown.”

He went onto this background – but was an even-longer-haired dachshund, silkier and more splendid after a last round of sewing.

Actually, the story doesn’t altogether end here. As Buddy’s owner is, obviously, very handy with the camera, I got the most adorable film of Buddy opening his parcel (well, opening is a rather generous description of a dog nuzzling an envelope in hunt of food – but it was very very lovely). And then there’s this:

What a star.