My battle to be top dog

Even a small dog can be quite high maintenance. No, I’m not talking about Mali, our one-year-old cavapoochon, but Bertie, a six-month-old cavapoo. Bertie is Mali’s best friend and — I regret to say — almost constant companion. The reason they spend so much time together is because his owner, a close friend of Caroline’s, drops him off on her way to work and picks him up on her way home. They both think it’s a perfect arrangement because the two dogs can keep each other company, gambolling away all day in our garden, while they get on with their busy lives. But Muggins here, whose office is located at the bottom of said garden, is the one left carrying the can.

Quite often, that can is full of poo. I’ve remarked before on Mali’s supernatural ability to strew the lawn with little brown sausages, depositing at least half a dozen every 24 hours, but Bertie makes Mali look anally retentive. He’s a sausage machine! Walking from the kitchen to my office every morning is like navigating the strip of land between a Taleban stronghold and a British army outpost in Helmand. A day doesn’t pass when I’m not out there, bent double with a roll of lavatory paper, gingerly disposing of these little bombs. I’ve told the kids that they can’t play football in the garden — or, indeed, set foot in it — until I’ve done a ‘sweep’, but this is a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. The upshot is that I spend quite a lot of time bent double over the stair carpet, too.

I thought all this work on the poo-removal front would earn me a lot of credit — it gives new meaning to the phrase ‘brownie points’ — but not a bit of it.