I can categorically say that despite its obvious flaws in the focus department, I had no hesitation whatsoever in choosing this for my PaD today.

JD and Lola rarely get given unfettered access to toys. JD has one major flaw that we’ve not been able to remedy. His moniker (JD) could, literally stand for Just Destroy as we’ve said before. He can completely destroy a toy that has been described by a manufacturer as “dog proof” within minutes of its arrival at the house. No matter how much love, attention, exercise and care we lavish on him he’s simply unable to contain himself with a toy.

In effect, this means he’s given “toys” such as hide chews or tennis balls but the tennis balls are part of a game with us that get taken off him when he arrives back inside the house. When a tennis ball has reached the end of its “tennis ball game” life, he is allowed to bring it in and do as he wishes with it. We buy used tennis balls on ebay or from sports centres or wherever we can buy them cheaply and this is the best we can do. We can’t give him access to other toys in this way because he can eat £5 within a few minutes. If we kept giving him toys every time he destroyed one we’d be completely broke.

There is one thing we’ve not tried – filling a room with toys and seeing how long it’d take to “cure” him of this destructive habit. We’re not convinced that even this would work.

Today my Mum and Dad arrived for a visit with a car load of goodies to help us make ends meet and one of the things in there was a massive raggy and if you could bottle the smiles on their faces and sell the bottles you’d make a fortune. They have played with it all afternoon and evening. Now they sleep – Lola on my foot and JD on the other side of the toy. Needless to say, there are small bits of rag scattered hither and thither all over the carpet, the kitchen, the garden and themselves. The raggy is unrecognisable, other than its colours. You can barely tell it was once a rope with knots at either end, now it looks like an accident in a knitting wool shop.

The trouble is, their obvious delight is my pain and guilt – I feel so bad that we don’t provide them with an unending supply of toys but we just can’t do that. For now though, their dreams are full of games with humans, raggies and each other and their hearts and mine are full of joy. So – does it matter that the photo has motion blur and a limited number of points in focus? No.