Sunday 25 October 2009

Rocky the Otterhound: Do Otterhounds hibernate?

This week we thought we would let you see a variety of photographs taken over the course of the last few weeks, at differing times of the day.

For the purposes of this weeks title we have included Mij as an honourary Otterhound, of course she is convinced she is one anyway, so it seems mean to exclude her!

Here in sunny old England, autumn has brought darker evenings and later mornings. Our hounds behaviour has altered slightly with the arrival of this phenomena.

We hope you enjoy these images .............











































































































































































In some images it may look like our hound's eyes are open. They are not; but like some other hound dog eyes, they have a fleshy bottom eyelid which when closed may show some of the inner eyelid ......

This effect is very handy if you want to freak out some of your guests, we have had the full range of reactions from the mildly amused to the full "get up and run"!!!!




















































































































































































































































Although they have been animated and continuing with day to day life, there has been a noticeable increase in the "abandoned sleep" behaviour. We are sure it's not because we have exhausted them during their awake phase, and it certainly isn't because they have sleep to catch up on!

So, "Do Otterhounds hibernate"? Well, not really I suppose, but give them a few more thousand years of evolution and they might well manouver themselves into it!

We're quite jealous really, how about you?









So, night night Rosie ........














And night night Rocky, dream of sleeping the winter away and waking up ready for a sunny springtime!

1 comment:

The 'splorin' Wolfies said...

those are some great pictures. giant hounds typically sleep 16-18 hours a day. lol. ours have the eye membrane too---it is for protection in the wild--so they "appear" to be awake and trick preditors!

nice post as always!!