Like every genius ever born, our latest Pup Coco is an eccentric. Well actually, to be more exact here, I think she may be a pervert.

I say this because she has a serious underwear fetish. Chums Sand and Jen came to stay last weekend, and I lost count of the amount of times I saw their knickers careering up and down the upstairs landing. Even once they’d packed ready for the return to sunny Surrey, the eight month old Norfolk terrier had her nose into any carefully unzipped bag-pocket, usually emerging triumphant with brightly-coloured loin cloths in one form or another.

She is also still at base camp on the ‘urine goes in the garden not the dishwasher’ learning curve. I’m as certain as ever she’s destined for Oxbridge, but we have to get this house-training thing sorted some time before then. I doubt very much if, every time her tutor offers Coco a sherry she wees on his Afghan carpet, it is going to be viewed as a harmless jape.

We’re slowly getting there when it comes to poo landing on newspaper. But as the newspaper moves closer to the doorstep on its way into the garden (hosepipe-ban monsoons permitting) the tiny incontinent person shows no sign at all of grasping that the location of the news media is in any way significant. Thus when I plonked my local paper by the bed before dropping off the other night, I wasn’t expecting that – the next time I picked it up – I’d discover a free gift in the form of dried excrement. Not for the first time, the View from Seaton was full of sh*t.

She is odd in a whole spectrum of ways. While very conscious of being watched while she eats (it puts her off, so we have to drape a towel over her little ‘safe area’ as she munches) she is unbelievable feisty in the presence of her elders and often crabby betters. Her favourite trick is to hide behind doors, hifi speakers, chairs etc, and then ambush any suspecting member of the four-legged inhabitants unfortunate enough to be passing. I don’t remember doing this to dour maiden aunts and ferocious uncles at her age, but times change and so we must adapt to them. Foxie, however, isn’t adapting very well at all. A loyal Daily Express reader, her view is that lowly puppies should be seen, but not ambush.

Middle dog Tiggy, by contrast, thinks the “boo!” game is a hoot. But even she has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to little upstarts deciding that they deserve to share the Two-Legged Woofers’ leftovers when offered. There is a panicked squeal from Coco, but the fear is short-lived: within seconds she is back doing her funny four-feet-off-the-ground dance (accompanied by little barks that go yup-yip-yap-yop) in circles around her elder sister. Most tribes in most species are actually scared of pack-members they think mad, and on occasion Tiggs definitely looks like she’s about to back off from Coco, in the same way that we humans tend to stare fixedly at the floor when the drunken nutter gets on the late bus home.

Just like human children, puppies are often far more amused by free entertainment than something bought in a shop. Coco has a toy collection I hope one day to donate to the British Museum, but her interest in – and savaging of – inner-tube cardboard from kitchen towels and bogrolls far exceeds anything else one might offer her.

But the bottom-line problem (so to speak) remains her confusion on the subject of where bodily functions are best performed. To date, her only real progress has been to do the business in unexpected places, perhaps based on the reasonable thesis that one is unlikely to look there. So it is that, since she joined our pack, Coco has pooed under beds, in pillows, behind desks, on multicoloured Azerbhijani carpets, and even on one occasion in a cap. I’m sort of OK with her chewing my slipper, but I draw a deep line in the sand when it comes to crapping in my souvenir from the Australian Blue Mountains.