The experts keep telling me I’ve got to put her to bed and leave her, but I can’t do it. I know I’m making a rod for my own back but when she starts crying in the night I get up and bring her into my bed. I try to sleep when she sleeps, but I’m so besotted with her that I tend to just stay awake staring at her as she’s lying in my arms. I don’t want to miss the slightest thing: a furrowing of her brow, a twitch of her tiny nose. As I type this, she’s lying in my lap looking adoringly up at me. I’m hoping I can put her down for a nap soon because I feel as though I will pass out if I don’t get some rest.
I’ve barely eaten. My brain has gone to mush. If I try to concentrate on something other than her, my mind feels like it’s been wiped blank. I can’t even think of a name. Nothing is pretty enough. Her kennel name is Byrecoc Cinemon Jonquil. Oh, I’m sorry, I should have said, she’s a puppy. Well, you didn’t think I had done the conventional thing for a woman of my age and had a baby, did you? Lord, no. I’ve got myself a tip-top cocker spaniel.
Not on impulse, I assure you. I’ve been planning this for a while. I’ve been searching exhaustively for a dog that ticks a very complex set of boxes, including ‘won’t eat the house rabbits’, ‘can be trained to run alongside a horse’ and ‘doesn’t yap’.
A week ago, the gamekeeper at the farm where I keep my horses wound down the window of his Defender and said, ‘Are you still interested in those cockers, because Long John says there’s only one left.’ Only one left. The magic words.
I hopped into the Defender. The gamekeeper looked at me sternly. ‘I’m not taking you down there unless you definitely want one because when you get there you will not be able to say no.’
I assured him that I did, that I had thought about this properly and that I would not blame him in any way for anything to do with my impending puppy ownership if it went wrong.
When we got to the breeder’s house, Long John took us into his back garden with its immaculate kennel area, overlooking the open fields where the dogs are trained.
In the first pen were seven or eight wiggly little black pups. I stared into the mass of cuteness wondering which pup was the ‘only one left’.
My heart raced as Long John stooped down to scoop up a puppy wearing a tiny yellow collar. ‘C’mere Cinemon,’ he said.
Then he plopped her in my arms, leaving me gasping for breath. The gamekeeper managed to extract me after 20 minutes and forbade me to buy the pup until I had gone away to think about it. Ten minutes later I rang him. ‘I’ve thought about it,’ I said.
Now I can’t think about anything. I’ve got puppy brain. I’ve been at home with her for three days so last night I decided I had to get out.
I went to dinner with a friend and left the pup in the charge of my cousin with a long list of truly paranoid instructions.
When I got to the restaurant I was trembling with separation anxiety. I sat down and snapped ‘Let’s order!’ at my friend, then wolfed down half a steak while gabbling random nonsense and texting my cousin on the phone in my lap: ‘Is she ok? …Is she crying?…How long did she cry for?…’ I felt sick. As my friend put the last bite of her meal in her mouth, I yelled at the waitress for the bill. Then I drove home screaming obscenities at a Ferrari in front of me doing an ostentatious 15mph. I was so demented with the need to reunite myself with the puppy that when we stopped at some traffic lights on the King’s Road I wound my window down, leaned out and yelled something at the Ferrari driver about the dimensions of his intimate parts. He drove at 5mph after that.
When I finally left him for dust on the Embankment my heart was in my mouth. I was imagining all kinds of horrors that had happened to the pup, including her wrapping the dressing-gown cord I had left her to play with around her neck. Also, I only had another ten minutes to get home to give her her rice pudding supper feed or I would have to phone my cousin and ask him to do it and then I would be a total failure. If this is anything like motherhood, it’s probably a good thing I haven’t done it.
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