Ding, dong – Belle

Upon entering MT 26 for the first time Belle sniffed out her territory and released her bowls in front of the red sofa. At least it was in the house and not in the car on the way home – as Bonnie did on her first trip home all those years ago.

Many have commented that getting a puppy is effectively akin to having a fifth child. Well, let me tell you I only wish that my newborn babies had been as easy as a puppy. The return visit from hospital with each of our new born babies was wrought with uncertainties, tiredness, stress and a plunge into the unknown.

For example:

With J: Am I breastfeeding properly? Why is he crying? G. you bathe him I’m too scared. Why won’t he wait at least three hours between feeds?
With K: How will J. like his new sister? How can I give him as much attention as I used to? Is he jealous? Why won’t she wait at least three hours between feeds?
With L: Is she growing as she should? Did I weigh her this morning? Is it alright to let J and K tug on her so hard? Why won’t she wait at least three hours between feeds?
With R: I wish L. wouldn’t pinch his ear while pretending to stroke him. Why do his pampers leak all the time? Oh no surely we don’t have to change his pj’s again – its 3.55 a.m. Why won’t he wait at least two hours between each feed.

So, bringing a pup home, well its like comparing a mole hill to Mount Kilimanjaro.

“Now, when you take her home tonight make sure she sleeps in your room. That way she will feel close to you and not abandoned. I’m sure taking your puppy home is like taking your children home for the first time,” the lady in the Kennel told us.

Well bollocks to that. Who are you kidding? This puppy is for fun and to be enjoyed. Not to be reared as a stake for humanitie's future. She is not one of my children and she will sleep downstairs where I can’t hear her yelping.

It is only recently, after nine and a half years of nocturnal interruptions that G. and I are actually getting a good night’s sleep. With R. finally sleeping through the night we are transformed, tolerant, really, really - no I mean really, nice people again. My patience with the children is a wonderful thing to behold. Now that I can sleep uninterrupted for at least six hours I am hardly going to allow this state of affairs to be interrupted by Belle.

Belle and I hadn’t been in the house ten minutes and I had just managed to clear away the first of many “eliminations” as the RSPCA so quaintly calls it when Rowena and Diana arrived to view our new purchase.

“Oh isn’t she gorgeous. Such a sweetie. Ahh look at her.” They crooned. Quite rightly she is a great looking dog. Half an hour later and the children crashed through the door from school.

“Where is she? Can I see her? I want to stroke her. No R. No R. not like that. L. you’re stroking her too hard.”

Belle was picked up, stroked, dragged around the floor, poked in the eye by R. pulled on her back legs by L., cuddled by K and brought into the garden by J. Not once did she growl, bark, snarl or snap. She just trembled and shat a lot. We had been warned that the stress of being taken away from her brothers and sisters and being introduced into a lively household would cause loose bowls.

Having just got R. potty trained, however, means that I am not too frazzled by it. Had I waited a year it may have been a different story. In any case yesterday, her second day here, and she has already marked out her territory in the garden and abandoned her preference for the patch in front of the red sofa. She is beginning to get used to the noise in the house when the children are around and beginning to run around with them in the garden. She even has the courage to eat her food with gusto and pleasure.

In the meantime she sits by my feet when I work on summaries. Its such a pleasure. Introducing the children to our family was overwhelming and wonderful, albeit tiring. Introducing Belle was easy, simple and a lot less complicated. And no she does not sleep in our room and I have only heard her yelp once in the night but happily turned around and gone back to sleep again.

A very un-VC-G affair

I must say I’m intrigued by all this puppy training business. It looks like a piece of cake compared to toddler training and child rearing. The dog training books, that G and I bought over the week-end in London, inform us that we must, on pain of bad dog behaviour, assert out “top dog” status. Can it possibly be true that all I have to do is play top dog and the dog will obey?

“Say “NO” firmly to your dog if they are disobedient” the RSPCA’s Complete Dog Training book asserts. Is that all? Just say “No” firmly. Could it be that simple. Certainly not a tactic that works with the kids – but could it with a puppy?

On particularly stubborn moments the children will look and challenge me: “So, just because you’re my Mummy, this does not give you a God given, sovereign, inalienable right to ask me to put my coat on and come shopping when I am in the middle of doing nothing in particular” and “On whose authority exactly is it that you have decided Saturday will not be spent behind the TV but outdoors going for a walk in the fresh air?” Or, to use their parlance: “Who says you’re the boss? You’re not the Queen.”

The concept of “top Mummy” has to be worked at all the time with all sorts of differing tactics, manoeuvrings and strategies. Its not because I bark the loudest, shout the loudest, command with authority or deny food, that I am therefore in charge.

Having just about managed to figure out the subtle strategies needed to tame the children to do my bidding I feel as though the “sit” command and “heel” command should be a doddle. However, time shall tell and no doubt I will be equally frustrated with our new puppy as I am with the children, when she ignores my “come here” command, in spite of having read all the books.

The whole VC-G household is extremely excited about our puppy, who arrives tomorrow. Well, when I say “all”, I should qualify that by saying all are excited bar G. who is looking very anxious. It is true that he wanted to wait another year or so before we got a dog. It is true that he was more or less forced into driving us for an hour and half to the kennels to visit the pups. It is true that it was a clever strategy to bring the children along … and it is true that it is very difficult to say no to a puppy when you see them eye to eye – especially a pup like Belle who has a white spot at the end of her black tail and a white patch that goes in a line up her nose.

When we saw her and her sister she allowed J. and K.M. to pick her up, stroke her and snuggle into their arms in total comfort and happiness.

“Can we buy her Daddy? Please, please, can we buy her?”

“Alright then.”

So we paid our EUR 50 deposit and promised to return the following week to pick her up. That was last Wednesday. Having been persuaded to by the border-collie, however, the first thing G. did when he got home was to Google “border collies” – and way hey wouldn’t you know, managed to find, just about all, the doom, gloom and scare mongering stories that exist in cyber-space on buying border collies.

Headlines such as “Not suitable for children under five” screamed out at us and “Border collies are essentially wolves” and (this from the Border Collie Rescue page) Many people say that once a Border Collie has tasted blood, they can never be trusted again and normally, the dogs are summarily exterminated.

Now, we had decided on a border collie for a number of reasons. Firstly, I remember them vividly on the farms in Wales where we went to school. The Welsh farmers, for fun and to keep us amused, would show us all the tricks that the border collies could do. They would do double backward summersaults to the command of a whistle, catch sticks, spin, dance and behave in a very doggy manner. They were always really friendly, unintimidating dogs and we used to pat and stroke them all the time. Ever since then I’ve loved border-collies for their intelligence, agility and fun.

Bonnie, although not a border-collies was a Rough border collie and a real softie. She only joined our family because there were no black and white border collies in Surrey in 1981 when Mum and Dad chose to buy. When we were on holiday in Cornwall, Belle, was a one year old border-collie who all the children fell in love with – and who never once tried to herd our kids into a pack, threaten them or taste their blood.

Still, judging by the material that G. was busy drudging up even I was beginning to think that it looked like we had paid a deposit on, and were on the verge of letting into our home, one of Satan’s finest blood-curdling hounds.

I know that border-collies need lots of exercise and company – but with four kids in the house our puppy will not be short on entertainment, fun or exercise. In any case they are also very loyal, lovable dogs and if treated well will be a fun member of the pack.

“You have to admit though Mummy”, K. said to me on Friday. “Its really not like you to agree to buying a dog. I mean, I still can’t quite believe that you have agreed to this. Its so unlike you.”

She obviously remembers the struggle she had to get her fish last year and our refusals to buy a: hamster, gerbil, cat (G. is allergic), mouse or tortoise for her birthday. Belle will, I hope, make up for the lack of all other pets.