Coco has settled in!

Coco the puppy is now an established member of the family and four times the size she was when she arrived. She appears, apart from the physical scars, to have got over her trauma of a couple of days ago when she was attacked by the neighbour's Staffie and be all well and good.

Yesterday, she finished puppy classes and by all accounts ought to now be able to sit, down, stay, leave, heel and come. Ought to be able to.

Coco is a thug! At each puppy class, she mugs a cute little cocker spaniel pup called Norman and terrorises a fluffy golden retriever called Orla who, being of a nervous disposition, wets and poos herself whenever this happens. Nothing I do will stop this behaviour; putting Coco into the ‘calm’ position, keeping her lead tight, giving treats, nothing. She is obviously intent on being the leader of the notorious  RH1 Doggie Gang (although of course Staffie down the road is presumably Boss Dog now, and sees his position being threatened).

Yet she has endeared herself to us in more ways than we could imagine. Despite the mess, smells, need for a vast amount of equipment and the trouble she has caused. The sheer delight with which she greets you when you have been out, her enthusiasm for games, her little character traits and idiosyncrasy and her simply gorgeous face all conspire to make her lovable.

The other weekend we took her round the local agricultural show, not without some trepidation at how she would react. But we needn’t have worried, she was an absolute star and even though it was socialising in a big way, loved every minute and new experience. Only two things worried her – the fox hounds en masse, and the motorbike display team. It took hours to go round; it’s unbelievable how soppy most people – including grown men - are about Labrador pups and every few steps someone would stop me and say “Aw, cute! Can I stroke your puppy?”

The one thing we haven’t yet cracked is her relationship with the moggies, all of whom continue to view her with suspicion. She, on the other hand, sees them as an untapped source of play and amusement and chases after them at every opportunity. She has had several scratches on the nose, none of which have deterred her, and the cats have resorted to slinking in at night for food and only coming in during the evening if it’s very cold or inclement. We need a good snap of cold weather to force the issue, I think, when the cats want to weld themselves to the radiator and the dog is too tired after a long walk to do anything about it.  

I’ve never really thought of myself as a doggy person, although I’ve never been anti dog. Lots of people think I am, but what I really don’t like are ill disciplined and badly behaved dogs. That’s why we have gone to puppy class, and our fault haven’t practised as much as we should have (these classes aren’t really for the dog, who takes longer than an hour to learn a new behaviour, but for the owners to learn the skills, gestures and behaviours to train their pet in their own time). In the coming weeks we will have to reinforce the good behaviour and standard responses that Coco needs to embed, as it’s a longer term ambition to be able to take her everywhere with everyone. She won’t jump up, eat food from the coffee table, scratch, bite or do any of the things which p**s people off about other people’s dogs. She will have exemplary behaviour as befits a Surrey Dog!

She already knows that the ultimate punishment is to be ‘sin binned’ which basically means being locked in her puppy cage for outrageous behaviour or failing to follow instructions. She hates it!

My daughter is looking after her when we are on holiday, and I am going to leave her a written sheet of instructions! She will also have to learn the commands and discipline instructions as consistency is very important. And no lazing in bed until noon, she’ll have to get up and do the early walk or clear up massive piles of poo!

When we come back Coco will no doubt have morphed into a wild wolf!

An awful thing happened - poor Coco!

Perhaps the most scary thing ever happened yesterday.

The Hubby and his youngest son were taking the little Labrador pup, Coco for her early evening walk, taking a route we have taken with her several times before.

This walk takes us past our neighbour’s house on the corner, where a Staffordshire Bull Terrier lives. In the past the gate has been closed and he has been sitting quite calmly behind it just watching the world go by. Yesterday, The Hubby and Son walked past the neighbour's house just as they came home and as I understand it, four things happened at pretty much the same time:-

1.    Their front gate opened to allow their car in

2.    Their front door opened as their son saw them come home

3.    Coco, The Hubby and Son walked past on the other side of the road.  

4.    This Staffie that has sat so calmly in the past few weeks caught sight of Coco from the hallway of the house, and in the space of about three seconds covered the 20 yards gap, leapt up and grabbed Coco by the neck, then…..

5.    Mayhem ensued.

It took four adults to get this Staffie to let go, and only then by brute force. Despite the fact that The Hubby had acted quickly and picked Coco up, the Staffie locked its jaws on her neck, tasted blood then hung on for grim death. My neighbour was apparently screaming and crying in the road at what was happening, having just got out of the car to admire the puppy, while her husband was unsuccessfully trying to get his dog under control. Poor Coco has a fairly deep puncture wound on her shoulder where this dog was swinging round in mid air refusing to let go. She cried, emptied her bowels and presumably bladder too, and was understandably totally petrified as any baby of just over three months old would be in that situation. Clearly her wound is causing her a lot of discomfort and needless to say she is off to the vet today to be checked out, probably jabbed with antibiotics and generally cosseted. If there is a substantial bill, they can bloody well pay it.

Staffies do have a reputation of being aggressive fighting dogs and one glance at Battersea’s or the RSPCA’s web sites will show you plenty of unwanted Staffies looking for homes, presumably for this very reason. The Hubby says what scared him was firstly the speed with which it all took place, but also the unbridled aggression from a dog that has sat so peacefully previously and given no inkling that it would do anything like this.

The walk was, of course, abandoned and The Hubby and Son were much shaken. The Hubby has scratches on his arm and one or two quite deep wounds on the heel of his thumb, that fleshy bit which can be extremely painful and is now throbbing like mad. We’ll give it another day or so then he’ll be off to the docs – fortunately our tetanus jabs are up to date! Son wasn’t scratched but was clearly shocked not only at what happened but at the level of force that was required to get the Staffie to release. There used to be a theory that to get a dog to let go you shoved a finger up it's a**e (thank you Barbara Woodhouse!) but all this happened so quickly that even if they had thought of it, they probably wouldn't have had time to get the rubber glove on!

Fortunately (or perhaps not) the animal didn’t attempt to attack a human, because if it had we would have to report it to the police as a dangerous dog which wouldn’t do a great deal for neighbourly relations. As it is, we’re not sure what to do; provided Coco is alright and no real harm is done, we probably won’t do anything except take extra care when going past and be vigilant near other dogs. Poor little puppy has gone out for a walk this morning and wasn’t reluctant or frightened, but didn’t meet any other dogs so it remains to be seen whether she has any psychological scars by association.

Our neighbours have apologised profusely and were obviously profoundly shocked at what their animal had done. To say the (nice) lady who it belongs to was devastated would be understating it. But still she made excuses for her dog along the lines of “He doesn’t mean it / he’s a softie really” etc. Rubbish! Yes, this was an accident, but unpredictable animals bred for aggression shouldn’t be family pets.

Poor Coco – what a traumatic evening. For all of us!

Still boistrous!

Second puppy class last night, and Coco was as boisterous as ever.

The slightly older Labrador that was there last week has now finished her classes, so she is now one of the larger dogs there and by far the most confident.

Almost the minute she arrived, she mugged a gorgeous fluffy golden retriever puppy that looked like it had come straight out of the tumble dryer and is about 10 weeks old (so slightly younger than her) causing it to pee on the floor with nerves, then set about a lovely little cocker spaniel puppy called Norman (great name!) batting him around the head with her paws as she has experienced our cats do to her. Norman didn’t like it, but fortunately his owner was very understanding!

On the plus side, I think we’ve pretty much got the hang of ‘sit’ and ‘down’ now and are well on the way to ‘stay’ and ‘leave’. In fact I’d venture to say that Coco was probably the fastest to learn ‘leave’ of all the puppies there (God, don’t I sound like a proud parent). But we are way behind with ‘heel’ and ‘come’, and it is clear that she is too free spirited to think they apply to her!

‘Heel’ and ‘come’ are two exercises the puppies have to learn off the lead, which I knew from the minute the trainer said “Now take off their leads” would be a recipe for disaster. On the lead Coco was fine with the ‘heel’ thing, but the minute I took it off she was racing around like a dervish distracting all the other puppies and trying to nick the treats from the hands of the other owners whose dogs were doing what they were told.

“Hold her in the calm position” suggested the trainer. The calm position is when you hold your puppy on your lap with its back to you and your arms firmly round its tummy, with the idea that if they feel close to you, their pack leader, and therefore secure they will calm down and behave. It works for about five seconds, then Coco gets restless, wriggles, squirms and tried to turn round and either bite your ear or lick your face. She also gets very hot in your arms and starts panting at an alarming rate, trying to get away and reach the water bowl in the middle of the floor (which in her boisterousness she overturned three times last evening) so she can gulp down gallons of water and cool down (then have a full bladder and pee on the floor or in the car if you are unlucky).

Despite all this, she is a sweetie and we are so glad we took the plunge and got her. She’ll learn, and part of the trouble with the classes is there are too many distractions and at 6.30pm it is right in the middle of her ‘frantic time’ when she has loads of energy that she wants to burn off because we have been busy or working all day. But there isn’t much choice if you work, as you have to do these things in the evening, so we’ll persevere.

So, this week’s homework is ‘stay’, ‘leave’ and ‘heel’. She clearly isn’t ready for ‘come’, which is when you let them go quite a distance away and then get them to return to you. Knowing my luck, she’d wander off to Godstone and be lost forever! We’ll work on all that over the next fortnight until the next class (nothing next week because of the bank holiday).

Then we’ll come home with a gold star! I hope!

Sit !!

On Monday evening (ie yesterday), we went to our first puppy training class.

I was prepared for an hour of humiliation, and it must be said that apart from another Labrador puppy that was slightly older than Coco she was the most confident and boisterous dog there, but actually it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought and I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself.

There were ten puppies there of varying ages between eight weeks and four months, so Coco was about middling. She was also middling size-wise, somewhere between the spaniels and one enormous Weimeramer (not sure if that is how you spell it, but anyway some bloody enormous Scandi hunting dog) that was only ten weeks old but already the size of a small pony.

There were three spaniels (two Cocker Spaniels and one King Charles), a Beagle, two Terriers, a Dalmatian, two Labs, this enormous thing and a few dogs which were either cross breed or something so pedigree I’d never heard of it, including one that looked like a teddy bear.

We learned ‘sit’, ‘down’ and had an attempt at ‘heel’. By and large, Coco didn’t do too badly although did get bored after a few attempts and when she discovered that once she got the hang of it all she was expected to do it without any meaty treats lost all interest and just rushed round the floor hoovering up the dropped bits of chicken breast that the other puppies had discarded.

The Hubby came along too, and if anything was a bit slower than the dog at learning, constantly forgetting all the verbal commands and being inconsistent with hand signals (he’s a bit like that when he’s driving the car, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised!). I think it was all a bit of a culture shock for him; after years of not having any animals at all and then in the last few acquiring a few cats through association with me, he suddenly has an energetic and strong minded, intelligent dog to deal with and has discovered a whole new world of things to do and buy.

All in all though, things went OK and at least Coco didn’t disgrace herself by peeing on the floor like a couple of the other, considerably more nervous puppies did. Considering she had never met another dog apart from her brothers and sisters (whom she has probably forgotten by now anyway) she was pretty well behaved and didn’t try to bite any other animal or person.

The lady running these classes has been recommended by the vets, and she is apparently an animal behaviourist as well as a puppy trainer. When she demonstrated the techniques on these infants, it all looked so easy but of course once the whole doggy class gets up and has a go there are so many distractions it makes it very difficult for the puppy to concentrate. So, we have homework! The exercises have to be repeated several times daily, firstly with treats then without. We have to take her out to meet other animals and get used to their presence so she is less easily distracted.

So there will be lots more trips out, which means, unfortunately for her, lots more trips in the car. Coco already dislikes the car and hates being shut behind her dog guard in the back and not able to join in with her human companions. It’s amazing how piercing a dog’s whine can be when you are enclosed with her inside four cubic metres of metal, but she has to get used to it because the car is a necessary evil of life today and what’s more, can take you to lots of good doggie places like the park. So somehow, she will have to at least learn to tolerate it, if not to like it.

We have plans to take her to the big agricultural show held locally over the August bank holiday weekend, so hopefully she will have learned to be in the car and to obey some basic commands by then. Otherwise it will be an interesting couple of days!

It's like having another baby!

The new puppy is running us ragged. Already, after two weeks of her being in our home, she has wormed her way into our affections and become part of the family. It’s just like having a baby again.

She is settling into our routine well, and we only had the night time crying for two nights. For the first two weeks someone was almost always there during the day with her as well, and it is only this week that she has had to manage for one or two days on her own. The first day she cried pitifully when we went to work (so my daughter tells me, as she was trying to sleep upstairs after a heavy night). The second day she cried only a little, and this morning she didn’t at all.

She is getting used to it all, even the cats who she is desperate to play with. Needless to say, the enthusiasm is not for the moment being returned. However we haven’t actually had any rough weather as yet so the cats are able to live in the greenhouse and sneak in at night for food and water. All three have reacted with varying degrees of mistrust towards Coco, and one of them will now sleep in the lounge during the day as long as puppy leaves her alone. Another will come in quietly for a nibble of food and then leave, but the last one won’t come near unless she knows puppy is shut away. It will take some cold weather and lots of rain, when they want to be warm and dry inside, to force the issue but we’ll get there.

Toilet training is more problematic, as we aren’t there all the time. By and large the number twos are done on newspaper by the door, but she does have a tendency to stop and have a wee wherever she happens to be, which is a tad inconvenient especially when you step in it! There is going to be one very smelly dirty rug going to the tip when she is eventually trained, I suspect some time next spring when she is eight or nine months old.

Despite being a cutie, she is also a nipper and any unshod feet are treated as fair game. Boy, it hurts! We are trying to use the dog manual’s recommended solution of yelling loudly then turning our back,and she is starting to get the message that biting is not acceptable. But I think her teeth are hurting her, poor little soul (again, just like a baby) so we are doing our best to find teething toys to play with.

We have bought a very nice kennel which she will eventually live in outside (and no, it isn’t cruel – she is a working dog and already loves being outside) where she will have much more freedom when we are out at work, will be able to keep warm and dry  and where it won’t matter too much if she makes a mess. We have secured the garden with yards of wire fencing so she cannot escape. Like everything else it will take getting used to and some adjustment, but she is a fast little learner. She’ll be fine.

It is incredible and very touching how much she likes people, and when you are there with her she is never far from your side. I sit at the dining table and work, and she sleeps under my chair. I sit and watch the TV, and she is at my feet (usually trying to bite them – see above). I am cooking in the kitchen, and she is around me all the time. I am jobbing in the garden, and she is mooching round my feet. She’s always there, like a little shadow. Maybe that’s what we should have called her – shadow!

But Coco is a perfect name for her. Apart from it’s play on the word cocoa, which is exactly the colour she is, she is a very stylish little dog with a pale blue leather collar that is covered in diamante (yes, I have blinged her up) and is very pretty. Coco Chanel herself couldn’t have wished for a better pet, but seeing as she was French she would probably have gone for a stupid little handbag dog instead.  

But already we love her, and we wouldn’t be without her. And our lives have changed immeasurably for ever!

Coco has arrived!

Well, the puppy has arrived. After having been an exclusively feline household for many years, we have a chocolate labrador retriever. Called Coco.

This little brown bundle of feet and belly has come into the house and totally taken over. We have had to create a 'den' by fencing off part of the lounge, acquire masses of equipment I simply had no idea about and enrolled her in the local vet's puppy club for her vaccinations, microchipping and eventually, to be speyed.

I had no idea that puppies poo'd so much! At just shy of eight weeks old, she isn't yet house trained. She has a designated place within her den where she is supposed to do anything she needs to do, and sometimes she does. We try and take her out into the garden when she has eaten, had a sleep, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She has treats when she performs appropriately, but so far she is having trouble getting the hang of it (particularly with where she should have a wee) and it is very difficult to identify the  signs that she needs to go. Apparently puppies do go frequently and when they are very small, as she is, they don't have any bladder control at all and when they need to go, they need to go NOW. So you don't get much warning to clip on the lead and take her out back. We have had several accidents, and I haven't cleared up so much poo in years.

It really is just like having a new baby and having to teach it the basics. I always hated potty training then, too. I suspect it will be several weeks before she really gets her head round it and by then, I will be questioning my decision to get her.

Sunday night was her first night away from her mum and siblings (there were seven in the litter) and she cried all night. We gave her a hot water bottle and a towel which we had rubbed all over her mum's back so she had a familiar smell close to her, and a ticking clock which sounded like a heart beat, but it didn't make any difference. She really does have a very piercing whine, punctuated by little high pitched barks. I sleep wearing ear plugs, so I wasn't too bothered, but The Hubby tells me she started at about 11.30pm and continued until he got up in the morning, starting up again when he went out for work. I bet the neighbours loved that, but at least it gets them back for all the times they have woken us up by yelling at each other all the time or when their own dog used to cry outside the house all day while they were out at work and had locked him in the garden.

The vet has suggested that we leave the radio on low as sometimes that can soothe a lonely puppy, so we'll try that tonight. I wonder if she is a Radio Four or Radio Two girl? But what I will not do is bring her upstairs with me; she has to learn that she is not the leader of the pack and cannot go where she wants just because she makes a fuss. Of course I don't want her to be distressed, but rules have to be established from the beginning. Similarly, she will not be allowed on the chairs.

Today, she has been to the vet and had her first vaccinations, been microchipped and had a worming tablet. I have flea treatments to give her in the next few days, and she has to go back in two weeks time for her second jabs. It's all go!

I have a feeling that my life will be significantly different from now on. Coco will dictate our timetable and lifestyle if we let her, although while she is a baby it is very difficult to do anything which doesn't allow us to meet her needs. She will help get us fitter by having to be walked, and most likely, once we get over the first few weeks, bring us an amazing amount of joy.

I'll let you know.