The strange case of the anti-social Coconut

When very small puppies sit down, being still at that age when they look to the owner ‘s face for reassurance, they have to  stare  almost straight up when one stands. I was in the garden with our new addition Coco yesterday, saying “Dooweez” (the way you do) and she looked up at me with that familiar gape of incomprehension. Then, trying to focus, she fell over backwards. Oh how we laughed.

Brand new creatures don’t worry about dignity very much. She gave a shake, sniffed at a twig, and then returned to her previous occupation of chasing the crisp Autumn leaves, being startled by everything, and running around a great deal.

I have never known a puppy run everywhere in quite the way Coco does. Her full name is Coconut, and she’s certainly living up to the suffix. It exhausts me just watching her; and indeed, it does her too. At this age puppies are like clockwork toys – when the spring is fully unwound, they fall over. Then they sleep. Then they wee, poo, and eat some more eukanuba. Getting them to excrete the bodily wastes in the right places is, of course, the main challenge. Our house is now one long series of newspaper lavatories, most of which the puppy ignores in favour of Persian carpets and polished wood. I am become the human pooper-scooper.

There are half-chewed toys on the floor everywhere. They used to squeak, but dogs have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to squeaky toys. All our shoes, spectacles and headphones are on high surfaces. For like all terriers, Coco is a great believer in dental hygiene, and the method of choice for maintaining that is chewing everything that doesn’t object to being chewed. Then shaking it about until the predator is entirely sure it’s extinct. This process often takes several months, as slippers can take forever to die.

Manic chewing includes one’s fingers, and also other dogs’ legs. The technique when they bite your digits is to scream in a high-pitched voice. This terrifies the canine, deafens the neighbours, but teaches them that chewing people is wrong. Usually. Coco takes the response to be a sign of enjoyment. This isn’t going down well with me. But it’s going down like a cup of cold sick with our other two dogs.

Middle dog Tiggs is only three anyway, so having initially backed off when she saw the new baby – as if Coconut might be an alien hedgehog – she’s delighted to have something that likes being chased, and demonstrates this by going “Yup” with enjoyment whenever it happens. As Tiggs has a habit of going “Erp”, when they’re doing that maypole thing just as the fun is about to start, it’s hilarious to listen to the erp-yup-erp as things get going.

The problem with Coco is that she has no sense of when enough is enough. Working on the encouraging principle that Tiggs hasn’t as yet eaten her, the latest gambit is biting the end of the older dog’s tail, and then being dragged along on a short sledging trip. Tiggy now has her back to the wall at all times of puppy wakefulness. But the new girl is on thinner ice with Foxie.

Foxie greeted the new arrival with a menacing snarl, and a disdainful retreat upstairs. She is the undisputed Alpha, and a firm believer in the do-it-to-them-before-they-do-it-to-you principle. She’s reduced the snarl down to a glare now, but is way past all the chasing pa-lava. As for having her legs eaten, that was never something she would tolerate anyway.

Now when the Alpha finally snaps, growls and goes in briefly for the face, 99% of puppies squeak in panic and sprint for the nearest sanctuary. We have lucked into the 1% that doesn’t. Instead, she does an amazing all-fours off the ground backwards jump, and goes “Yup” again. Then she goes back for some more. This is how Arab border wars start.

In short, Coco is fearless. There are up and down sides to this: on the one hand, her only danger with Foxie is being gummed to death, as most of her teeth fell out years ago. On the other, who knows what troubles might lie ahead once the new pack member reaches truculent adolescence?

The good news is that they’re all three sleeping together quite happily now. I find this an enormous relief, as giving new puppies their space at night means our bed becomes a terrier treat for three weeks. I retreat to the middle bedroom in search of tranquility. Lack of bloke and presence of dogs on the bed is as close to nirvana as Jan could get. A horse in there too would add the perfect touch for my wife, but even she recognises that this would be a tad extreme.

Like all goody-two-shoes owners, we are still waiting for the pup’s injections to mature before taking her out to meet other dogs. At that time, we shall have the joy of watching her fail to understand that the lead isn’t something to climb up, enormous bull mastiffs are not vegetarians, and squirrels cannot be caught. Then it’ll be down the vet for socialisation classes. My two key conclusions from undergoing this ordeal are that first, it’s the owners who mainly need socialising; and second, there’s a great deal of urine involved – which is why the vets put an enormous plastic sheet down, and then retreat immediately. Once things get lively, it isn’t really what you’d call a class. It looks to me more like a canine reconstruction of the Battle of Little Bighorn. I’m always relieved when it ends.

As I write, Coco is going twelve rounds with one of Jan’s Crocs. More news in due course.