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Last year when I was staying with my sister in law in Kew I saw a pair of stone pointers in an antique shop. It was love at first sight and I knew that they would look wonderful outside our gate – if a little eccentric as our gate is tatty wood and not the elegant wrought iron that a pair of beauties like these would normally demand.
They weren’t even very expensive but I hummed and hawed and havered over whether I could really drive them back to Bordeaux and eventually wimped out. And of course I curse myself for being so wet, I could have managed to bring them back, it wouldn’t have mattered having to drive really slowly as there was a problem with the accelerator cable on the car and we had to do the whole 900 plus kilometres at a snail’s pace anyway.
I still regret the ones that got away but since the nice vigneron who has the vines behind the house mowed the grass and provided some nice comfy beds we’ve found that we’ve got a pair of decorative gate guardians anyway…
Victoria Corby 
oh yes, that was a real shame to leave them behind, though the new ones may prove more effective scaring off intruders!
I do like the cuddly, happy to see you, but scare off any intruders variety.
They’re actually good guard dogs. People tend to think Dalmatians are the dumb blondes of the dog world because they’re so decorative but they aren’t thick. The American Army used Dalmatians at sentry posts in WW 2 as they’re very territorial, bark a lot, are highly visible as a deterrent but don’t tend to eat intruders on sight.
What a pity you left them behind. I probably would have done too. Maybe they’ll still be there next time you go back. Nice to have the living, breathing variety, though.
Sadly I think someone less wimpish than me will have snapped them up almost immediately..
The substitutes are beautiful. However, I would have snapped up the originals, because they look, from the photos, so like Hungarian Vizslas, of which I have had five, and still have one.
Everytime I think of them I think ‘Oh, you fool!’ They are like Vizslas aren’t they? We were offered a Vizsla/Collie cross the other day, I said no, two Dalmatians cause quite enough havoc.