We went to Poppy’s breeder yesterday for a second viewing of the new litter of pups who are now around 6 weeks old.

In Poppy’s case we only got to select from the available pups right on the day of collection, but this time around we had a free pick of the five little boys – something we hadn’t been expecting. There wasn’t much to separate them in terms of markings but two them had apparently been making extra visits to the food cupboard, and it has to be said that of those two, one was a bit of a biffer. In fact we was so much bigger than his siblings that he could cause a roadblock just by standing in the doorway of the puppy residence.

In recent weeks Poppy has kind of become Beanie’s understudy, so we wanted our new little boy to be a good match for Biggles. As we started to describe The Bigglet’s main traits to the breeder, phrases like “differently intelligent”, “a bit slow” and “not the leader type” somehow entered the conversation. As it turned out, those same phrases seemed to be a fit for the more generously proportioned boy. Apparently he wasn’t just bigger than his siblings, he was also Bigglier.

The breeder picked up a pup for Susan to hold, and handed me the candidate mini-Bigglet. I held him with one hand under his bum and one hand across his chest under his front paws. As he sank into my hands he curled those paws round my thumb and forefinger to grip them firmly. In my head it was like he was saying “choose me.” After another round of discussion, that’s exactly what we did. So here’s the not-so-little fellow who’ll be joining us in a couple of weeks, and we’re going to call him Monkey: