Too old for another baby? Get a f luffy substitute like mine
OH RIGHT, oh right!’ said my father down the phone, in his most withering how-did-I-manage-to-breed-such-an-utter-idiot voice. ‘Because what you really need right now in your life is another ruddy dog!’
He’s right, of course: I don’t need another dog. Not least because the one I’ve got is already quite a handful. Thanks to Snowy (a distinctly non-pedigree rescue bichon frise), there are entire areas across Britain where my family and I are no longer welcome house guests.
Add to that the fact that we also have a guinea pig and a rabbit, and my desire to acquire Muffin would seem, on the surface, deranged.
But when you see Muffin, you understand. She is, quite simply, the most absurdly sweet thing ever, in the entire history of sweet things.
To be fair, so is her mother, an heroic purebred Lhasa Apso. (Her father is a Lhasa Apso/wire-haired Dachshund mix.) I first got wind of the existence of Muffin and her siblings from a friend. A lady in her village had a litter: five bitches and a dog. She was looking for homes for them.
I asked the kids if they wanted to see some puppies, thinking we would just turn up, go aaaah, and make our excuses.
And we would have, had it not been for Muffin.
DON’T get me wrong: all the puppies were adorable. But there was just something about Muffin. She was the smallest in the litter — the runt, I suppose. All the others were tumbling around like fat baby seals, but Muffin was sitting to one side, looking as aloof as you possibly can when you resemble a Furby.
There was something rather zen (well, I guess they are Tibetan temple dogs, after all), yet also quietly intelligent about her demeanour.
At that stage, she was about the size of an iPhone 5.
When I went to collect her a week ago, she weighed the same as a lemon.
As I write, she is sleeping in her new favourite place, my husband’s left running shoe, in the hallway.
I have no delusions. Muffin is clearly a middle-aged woman’s baby fantasy.
Now that my two are starting to grow up, and the possibility of having any more actual human children of my own fades, Muffin is the closest I’m going to get to the real thing — until and if, of course, my two decide to reproduce when they are adults.
As my friend Sophie texted me after I sent her a picture of Muffin, ‘Fact: Puppies happen when your youngest child is 11.’ She then sent me a snap of her brand new vintage Mini, accompanied by the message: ‘This is what happens when your first child goes to university.’
She is so right. Will, aged ten, is currently applying for secondary schools, and inside I’m quietly panicking.
Having just been through it all with my daughter, who is her second year of secondary school, I know only too well the traumas that lie ahead as he transitions from the safety of primary school to the bear-pit of secondary.
Muffin is my antidote to all that pesky growing up. All that having to
be responsible and sensible and on-time, not to mention the emotional complexities of young adulthood.
Muffin embodies that carefree spirit of childhood, where nothing really matters for very long, and actions have no real consequences (except, perhaps, a gentle smack on the bottom for depositing something smelly in the wrong corner).
We all need a bit of Muffin in our lives. Like small babies, puppies are just little bundles of pure, unadulterated joy. Simple, uncomplicated happiness. And I’m sure this can’t be accidental.
Nature is very clever, see. And I can’t help wondering whether when wolves first became domesticated all those thousands of years ago, their young somehow evolved to remind soppy old women like me of their own babies — and therefore increase their chances of survival. Muffin would certainly fit this theory. Even the way she sleeps — spreadeagled on her back — and the funny, snuffly noises she makes, are reminiscent of a human baby.
As are her overall shape — her fat little tummy, her beady eyes — and the way her head wobbles slightly unsteadily when she sits up.
Practically, too, having a puppy in the house is really not very different from having a baby. There’s an awful lot of widdle, the washing machine always seems to be on — and no sooner have you fed them than it all emerges from the other end.
When she’s not sleeping, she wobbles about the place, falling over and bumping her head on various bits of furniture. She cries if you put her down, loves her bath and likes to chew things. The children adore her, of course. She even comes with us on the school run every morning — a magnet f or prepubescent girls (much to my son’s horror).
After drop- off, I get my fitness instructor Sam to hold her for me, while I do my squats, and he grins sheepishly as the younger, more attractive female members of the gym cluster around him, cooing and stroking her. Then it’s off to the park for her morning ‘walk’ — aka being carried around by me — before returning home to her beloved trainer, lying in wait in our hallway. Even Snowy, who made it clear on day two exactly how he felt about the new addition by depositing several large messes at strategic locations throughout the house, is beginning to show grudging signs of liking her.
As for my husband, well, he’s not quite as in love with her as I am.
But then it took him a while to adjust to the arrival of the children, so I’m confident it won’t be long before he’s besotted with this one, too.
At the moment, he’s still pretending very hard to disapprove, but I think that, secretly, he quite likes her.
Which is just as well, really, because come tomorrow morning, he might just find that one of his running shoes is mysteriously damper than the other . . .