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

If the family tradition is to be believed the surname Whitson in Scotland is of Viking origin. The story as it was written down by my great-uncle Sir Thomas Whitson, who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1929-1932, was that three Viking brothers sailed from Norway to Scotland in their longboats, landing at Footdee (locally Fittie), at the mouth of the River Dee at Aberdeen where it meets the North Sea.

SMOKE RISING vertically from the chimney pots, not so much as a whisper of breeze to twitch the topmost branches of the tallest trees or shiver the fragile grasses in the hedgerows, and white duvets of mist hanging in the field bottoms. I wish I was talking about a fairytale morning with a frosty nip in the air and a warming sun burning off the mist.

MY TAUTOLOGY blunder – the Vale of Strathmore – may have run its course. I got a call from a retired farmer at the head of Glenesk who told me that he grew up calling it the Howe of Strathmore, much as we refer to the Howe of the Mearns.

THE BLACK Isle is one of those off-the-main-track parts of Scotland that I reproach people for racing past in their haste to get somewhere else. The name reflects the rich, fertile land of the peninsula whose shores are washed by the waters of the Cromarty Firth on the north and the Moray Firth to the south.

OH DEAR, I’ve been getting stick for writing about the Vale of Strathmore (October 22nd). Reproached for falling into the trap of tautology, the unnecessary repetition of the same thing using different words – strath and vale or valley being synonymous. Worse still, I’m guilty of allowing unwelcome Anglicisation to debase guid Scots words – clearly pretty slack behaviour.