Honestly I was in no hurry to do the puppy thing again. I’ve had that experience once; it was hard work and I had no desire to repeat it. Besides which, there are countless hundreds of thousands of poor, unwanted, homeless dogs in the world, failed by humans or in shelters through no fault of their own. I follow Niall Harbison and SophiefromRomania and DogsTrust and DogsOn The Streets and Nowzad, for goodness’ sake. Why on earth would I want to choose a puppy from a breeder? I know all of this only too well.

And yet, the hole in my life is Oscar-shaped. Whenever I chop up vegetables for supper I miss that huge, questing nosey exactly at worktop height. Settle down to do, well anything, and there is no insistent “Mum. Mum! MUM!!” from a FOMO flatcoat who refuses to be ignored. I miss it. Oscar has spoiled me for the breed. I love them. I cannot pass one in the street without crossing the road to say hello and scritch behind their ears. I love them. (I know. I said that)

I’ve been on the breed rescue lists almost since Oscar died but the fact is that Flatcoats rarely come up for rescue. It looked like I was in for a long wait for a new dog, and my friends were whispering that perhaps I should look for a puppy. Still I resisted looking, though at the same time hearing anecdotes of how difficult it is to rescue dogs from shelters here in the UK because of the stringent requirements of an adoptive home. This is not a criticism. I can only imagine the pain of a dog, 80% emotion in my view, who has been adopted by what he thinks is his forever family, only to find himself back in a shelter without understanding what he’s done wrong.

An older dog will come with its own emotional baggage, which can be difficult to unravel and untrain. I think back to the sad tale of Poppy in Discovery Bay, rejected by her family when she was no longer a cute puppy and fostered and then rejected by them again when she found them again, sunbathing on the beach a couple of years later. They disowned her and shooed her away and, by the time we met her in foster care for four years, she was too timid to trust anyone again. I regret not taking her in but adding another dog to our home would have been too difficult. I did rehome Raffles, after all, and whilst he’s adapted pretty well to life with us, you can’t take the beagle out of a beagle.

Then, a couple of weeks ago a dear and trusted friend pointed me in the direction of a litter of newborn pups, one of whose prospective owners had had a change of circumstance and could no longer take on this huge emotional and financial responsibility. Long story short, here I am now, perusing Pets At Home and Lords and Labradors to try and prepare myself for our pup to come.

It’s been 15 years since I last raised a puppy, who turned out to be wonderful and funny and sweet despite my complete lack of dog experience. This time I’m going into this with eyes open. I want to bring all of my experience with Oscar and Raffles to raising the new pup, but the thinking on training as well as the sentience of animals in general has seen huge changes over the last decade and a half. People are different now since the pandemic, and there are still lots of lockdown puppies and their lockdown owners about. This time I need to make allowances for them. Defensive puppy-raising. It’s a total rethink and so very daunting.

This puppy is extremely lucky to have loads of support from several fairy dogmothers. We pick him up on our return from holiday in a few weeks. Exciting!