It’s been a drama-filled fortnight. We’ve had highs, we’ve had lows, and we’ve had poo. Lots and lots of poo, most of it in inappropriate places.

Prior to bringing Poppy home we built what we thought was a lovely playpen in a corner of our lounge. It had a little foam-walled kennel in it, a plush bed, a wall-mounted water bowl and lots of toys. What pup could fail to love such an indulgent little den?

Well Poppy clearly didn’t. She seemed to view it as a prison and nothing else. We got tantrums whenever she was placed in there, even if her confinement followed a long and fun play session in the garden. When we stopped pandering to the tantrums, Poppy began pooping and peeing in there. At first we thought these incidents were purely accidental, but one day she soiled the playpen four times in a row on entry, right after having gone to the toilet in the garden. Everything in there got hit by the dirty protests; Poppy’s squeaky chicken and crinkly rabbit ended up looking like they’d been spelunking in the sewers after a beer and curry festival.

This was a new problem to us, and one we hadn’t been expecting as Beanie & Biggles had both been so easy to toilet train. Research suggested reducing the size of the playpen and removing the bedding; we did that, and we also minimized the use of the playpen, instead giving Poppy more freedom during her waking hours, and putting her in her crate to have proper, uninterrupted naps. This worked rapidly, kicking the toilet training back into forward gear and all but eliminating the tantrums. I guess the playpen had been a half-way house between freedom and the crate, and as such, had not played either role particularly well.

Just as we got Poppy back on track, we knocked Biggles right off it.

As a pup The Bigglet never really had the traditional “mad hour”, but in recent years he’s more than made up for that with daily “I’ve got to get something” sessions, where he roams the house looking for things to steal and “sell” back to us for treats. Socks are normally the principal target, but he’ll make do with other items – toilet rolls, cups, tissues for example . To make up for all the attention being directed at Poppy, Susan came up with the idea that we should provided an augmented “Biggle Hour”, deliberately making caches of socks, hooves and other desirables available for him to grab. The first trial of Biggle Hour worked very well, and left Biggles looking very pleased with himself and his thieving skills. Over the next couple of sessions we could sense his confidence and sense of importance growing, but we didn’t realize we were creating a monster, albeit a monster with a big white furry bottom and over-sized ears. The next night, shortly after going to bed in his crate, Biggles issued a code-red “Woof” – a signal that a trip to the outside loo was required urgently. I opened his crate, expecting him to head down the corridor to be let out through the kitchen, but instead he just leaped straight into our bed. I recovered him, marched him out into the garden to do what he’d claimed he needed and re-crated him. Just as I was drifting off to sleep there was another code-red “Woof”, and again it was all about getting into our bed. I guess when a little boy gets sufficiently important, he should have a Humie bed to sleep in instead of a lowly crate. It took two further nights of woof-interrupted sleep to break him of that belief.

That’s about it for now. I’m sitting on a small mountain of Poppy video clips that I still need put together, but I do have a few more photos ready to share.

Toys are nice

But a bit of cardboard from the compost heap is even better

Tug this..

Preferably not this