Well, the other week I finally succumbed and we all headed into York to look at some puppies Caroline had found on Gumtree. She’d wanted a puppy for a while now and I wasn’t too sure but when she showed me the pictures I was swayed and phoned up to arrange to go and see them.
When we went to check them out they had a total of six puppies with only one of them taken which was quite a surprise as they’d been advertised for a while and they were incredibly cute (and cheap too). The dad is a Cocker Spaniel and the mum is a Parson Terrier so the puppies aren’t going to be too big and they have a really inquisitive and playful temperament. All of the puppies were black with little white bibs and a few had short terrier ears and a few had big, floppy spaniel ears.
After what turned out to be an hour and a half we finally settled on a girl called Poppy - one of the ones with floppy ears. and got her all ready for the car ride home. We were pretty lucky in that she was incredible well behaved in the car except that there was something about my voice that she loved and she kept clambering over to climb on me. Anyway, we got home and let her settle in.
Now, when we picked her up we were given her date of birth and told that she was eight weeks old and we never thought to do the maths ourselves and check. Being eight weeks we thought “great” and booked her into the vets for her first set of vaccinations. It wasn’t until Caroline was filling out the registration forms that we realised she was, in fact, only seven weeks old! So, back in the car with a new appointment for the following week.
This week’s been good fun and I really enjoy having the puppy about the house. We’re now in the process of training her to go outside to use the toilet and it’s going fairly well. She’s also a bit playful and this gets her really worked up until she’s either chomping on your fingers or toes with her sharp little teeth or lying on her back for a good tummy scratch. Because she’s so playful Jake’s a little unsure of her and doesn’t like her around his feet but, as soon as she calms down a bit he does a great job of looking after her — stroking her, carrying her and feeding her.
We’re now desperately waiting for her vaccinations so we can start to take her out, we think this will really help to calm her down. She’s had a bit of a play in the back garden to start to get her used to new experiences and she enjoyed it (but ate a bit too much grass for my liking). All in all we’re really happy with how she’s settled in, she’s nice and playful and very affectionate and is just starting to get a bit more confident and often vanishes for a quick play by herself.
I’m glad I’ve been talked round and I’m really looking forward to when she gets a bit older and we can all head out on family weekend walks and picnics.