Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.

JANUARY FIRST always brings a series of other firsts in its trail.

NIGHTFALL DOESN'T mean the whole world pulls down the blinds, draws the curtains and prepares for bed after the Newsnight programme   We have those two dogs whose internal alarm clocks are programmed to go off at the end of the 10 o'clock news when they make it plain that they are ready to go out for the last run

THE OPTIMIST in me had me thinking that three weeks, maybe a month, of the snowy weather would be plenty to be going on with   Like a true greybeard I've been musing on about the horrors of the winter of 1947 – although I was only a bairn at the time – and the grim conditions we endured in 1979, ingenuously implying that today's generation don't know how easy a time they're having by comparison.

MARGARET HOGG, wife of James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, poet, writer and friend of Sir Walter Scott, was likely caught up in the bitter grip of a winter similar to the one we're experiencing just now, when she wrote solicitously to her husband on 22 January 1832 – “My dearest James  €¦I hope you have got warm drawers  €¦”

THE TWEED-CLAD figure standing beside me at the Christmas party, dressed fit to kill, prompted the question whether he was wearing an estate check. Our erstwhile neighbour Ronald confirmed that indeed he was, and it went back to his days as Resident Factor to the Stirlings of Keir in Perthshire.