Users that have recently upgraded to the latest version of WordPress see a welcome screen that details some of the improvements and new features in the latest release:

Starring alongside Live Theme Previews, Custom Headers and Better Captions is a very good looking golden retriever… who just happens to be our very own Darcy.

We adopted Darcy from Pets Lifeline in Sonoma County, CA when she was a little over a year old (she’s now three). She had been a puppy with a family that had kept her in a back yard and never let her see other dogs. Thankfully they eventually realised that they couldn’t keep her like that forever and we were lucky to be looking to adopt a dog at the same time.

Pete and Evan with Darcy and Stella on Blithedale Summit

Evan and Chelsea are particularly frequent visitors. The picture above (and the one on the welcome screen taken in the back of a car) is from early February, when they brought Stella for a hike with me and Darcy on Blithedale Summit and Chelsea (as always) had her camera at the ready.

Chelsea’s been looking after Darcy for the last couple of weeks while I’ve been in Europe and has some fabulous new pictures of her:

Thanks to her new internet stardom (WordPress 3.4 has already been downloaded nearly 2 million times), Darcy has a whole load of new fans now, and has been (unknowingly) receiving appreciation from lots of strangers:

And I loved the caption added to the car picture in this post. It seems some people figured Darcy out straight away!

If you want to keep up with Darcy’s antics, then you should probably follow the (misleadingly named) Daily Darcy.