Cathy Kelly

Newsletter Feature: Puppies!

Posted on 14 Jun 2010

If you are not a dog lover, skip this bit: it's a love letter to three puppies. Dinky, Licky and Scamp. They're three Jack Russell sisters and they came into our lives a month ago. They are adorable. Initially, we got Licky (white and caramel) and Scamp (all caramel with green/amber eyes) and left Dinky; the last of the litter. We wanted two dogs, right? But then we couldn't bear to think of Dinky (caramel coloured with a black nose and shining black eyes) away from her sisters so now, we have three.

Dogs are such spiritual creatures. You can look into those big eyes and see the world. Stevie Smith's poem, Pug, is a glorious poem about an anxious-eyed pug and captures the spirit of dogs wonderfully.

For such little silky things, our three puppies have such big personalities. Dinky, the smallest, is the most mischievous. Licky is absolutely the lickiest, and Scamp gazes at me with those big amber/green eyes and I get lost.

We all love them to bits and I don't think there's anything nicer than lying down watching TV with sleeping puppies draped across you.

I'd forgotten how hard house training is, though. They aren't a bit put off by the stop-puppies-biting spray. In fact, I was crawling around on my knees spraying it and Scamp kept delightedly trying to run off with the spray tin itself.

I have discovered that if you over-do it with the teach-puppy-where-to-pee spray, the house smells as if a million incontinent dogs have been living there for a month. I have burned down all nice smelling candles to stubs. They are also obsessed with my old slippers/sandals and are eating the heck out of them.

But the fun and the love and the puppy licks...

There's a symmetry here: we got the pups on a Monday, and the following day, it was exactly seven years since my beloved Tamsin, a beautiful golden Labrador, died. The universe at work.