Snugglejunkie

I'd like you to meet my dog. She's a staffy-cross. Most staffies you see are stumpy-legged and barrel-shaped. But this one is leggy. She has a ridiculous metabolism, even after being neutered, and she never seems to gain weight. If she manages to get into the kitchen bin and eats something that disgarees with her, she starts to look disturbingly ribby very quickly. She's genetically inclined to be muscly, and all that brawn is covered in a thin layer of soft, glossy velvet.

Her greatest loves are food and snuggles. Her other great love is tennis balls. She would cheerfully play fetch and not stop until she dropped dead of sheer exhaustion, and possibly not even then.

I know she looks goofy, but don't be fooled. She is bright. Her favourite trick is playing dead, because she knows she is guaranteed to get belly rubs, but she does other, more useful things, too. She does little odd jobs around the place - fetching things we point to, closing doors, collecting post. We don't even need to yell "Post!" anymore - she hears the letterbox thunk and she leaps up with terrific enthusiasm and races to the front door. If it's a parcel, she likes the delivery person to hand it to her so she can carry it into the house, strutting to tell you she is very pleased with herself. She has not got the hang of newspapers. More often than not, she leaves a trail of pages between the hallway and the couch, to lay the last soggy sheet proudly in your lap.

It's hard to pick a day with this goofy lunk of a dog to share with you. To her, every day is like Christmas Day. There is always something to be overjoyed about. There's always the possibility of a yoghurt pot or a bit of salmon around every corner. She smiles - real smiles, I mean, great big cheesy infectious grins.

I will choose a day to tell you about. But I am going to indulge a little meandering first.

There was the day she was the top of the puppy class. Admittedly, only because the trainer guy had a box of cheese cubes. She did a Sit so rigid and perfect, with every cell in her body alert to the possibility of cheddar, that she sort of vibrated closer to him. Like the Hermione Granger of dogs. Her eyes almost popped out of her head and her indignant yowls when he handed out treats to the other puppies had us in stitches.

There was the day she won Waggiest Tail at a local dog show.

There was the day she ate a Samsung tablet and two DVDs. Or the day she ate our sofa. (Well. That is an exaggeration. It was only half the sofa.)

There was the first day of our canal boat holiday, when she installed herself up front with her paws up on the rails and a big smile plastered over her face. She loathes water in all its forms: ponds, baths, puddles, rain - so she did a fair impression of Scooby Do actually getting on the boat for the first time. But after that she had the time of her life. I had to throw my arms round her to stop her leaping after a squirrel, though.

There was the time we took her to the beach and bought her an ice cream. (Yes, I know dogs are lactose intolerant, but a staffy eating an ice cream is the embodiment of happiness.)

There was the first time I took her for her injections, and she whimpered like an actual baby when the needle went in. She fell completely in love with the vet anyway, because he had milk bones in his pocket.

There was the time I took her to be spayed, and felt so sorry for her that I bought her a burger afterwards. People say Staffies have a high pain threshold. She shows no evidence of this. She is not at all stoic. A burger has now become tradition after every vet visit. Of course, on the rare occasion we are buying one for ourselves, we can't leave her out. Those days are, to her, like Christmas squared.

There was the time I took her for her booster jabs during lockdown and was not permitted to be in the room. It took ten minutes, three members of staff and a cartoonish amount of thumping and scrabbling to administer one little needle. The vet looked miserable when she brought her back to me in the waiting room and I inquired politely whether they had also given her the kennel cough vaccine. They had not. Back they went for another ten minutes of swearing and wrestling while they tried to get it up her nose. (She doesn't bite or anything. She's just like a huge slippery seal that is completely determined to escape, find me, throw herself at me, and possibly try to climb inside me.)

There was the time I left her tied outside the school by mistake so I asked my son to nip back and fetch her. They would both be in my sight the whole time, and it would save us all traipsing back the way we came. He barely got the lead unlooped from the fence before she started hurtling back to me. Is there a word for water skiing on dry land? That is what it looked like. I've never seen an animal so bulky move so fast. I had to call out t0 the poor lad to drop the lead so that he wasn't pulled right over.

There was the time we left her with a dog sitter for a weekend, and she broke out and made a heroic bid to make her way home. Like Lassie in Lassie Come Home, or the pets in The Incredible Journey.

I'm making her sound like a terrible dog, aren't I?

She's not, I swear. She is clean in the house, placid, gentle around children, and usually walks well on a lead. Rarely do you need to ask her to do anything twice. Her recall is the most perfect I have ever seen, bar none. OK, so she went through a chewy phase, but tell me what puppy doesn't? Her biggest problem is probably that she is loyal to the point of neurosis, although she will go with anyone if they've got a biscuit.

I think the best day to tell you about would be the very first day she joined our home.

There were eleven pups in the litter. The mother was chocolate-brown Staffordshire Bull Terrier with longer legs than you might expect. The puppies were a ragtag bunch, some smooth and some fluffy, some black, some pale brindle and some cocoa-coloured, like their mama.

They had all been surrendered to the shelter when the pups were two days old. By the time I went, all but one of those puppies had a home. What is wrong with that poor puppy? I wondered. Maybe she is sickly. A runt. Maybe there is something wrong with her temperament.

The kennel-hand scooped her out. I watched her gambol around the small enclosed field. She didn't look especially small or nervy. A little lost without her hoard of siblings, maybe. It was a drizzly grey sort of day in early December, and she shivered against the cold. To me, she just looked like a regular Staffy pup. (They assured us she was a cross, but didn't know what with.) Her coat was brindle, so dark it was almost black, with a white chest and white feet.

This would be my first dog since my last died five years before. I wanted to do it right. I had warned myself sternly that I wouldn't be coming home with the first sweet dog I laid my eyes on. We had to be a good fit. This was for life. But she was so responsive, I just knew we would get along. She was unconcerned about the sheep in the next field, and unimpressed by the pony in the adjoining paddock. Irresistible warm velvet with big round eyes and a pink ham slice of a tongue.

She travelled well in the car. I made a stop at the pet shop for some supplies on our way home. To be truthful, it wasn't completely essential. It's just kind of fun to take a puppy in a shop. It feels almost like achieving temporary celebrity status. From a practical point of view, it also meant that I could time it perfectly to coincide my return home with the school run. I hid her in my coat and smuggled her into the school yard to wait for the children - eight and five years old. Technically dogs weren't allowed, but the looks on their faces made the rule bending worth it. I had no intention of putting her on the ground, anyway - she stayed huddled in my coat the whole time. The children had no idea I'd even gone to see a puppy - I hadn't told them because I hadn't wanted them to be disappointed. The surprise and delight shining out of their faces lit up the whole day.

At meal time, we discovered her first flaw. She eats like ex-convicts do in movies - ultra fast in case anyone steals their share. Her shoulders hunched forward and inhaling it into her gut without even chewing it. It doesn't matter what it is. She will eat anything, even things that aren't really supposed to be eaten. (I'm still bitter about that tablet.) Not only that, but she will eat it like it's her last and only meal. I warned the children to stay away from her food bowl, and started working on some table manners, but I needn't have worried. She's never possessive or grumpy. In fact, if a person approaches her bowl she is optimistic they are going to refill it. Optimism is practically her middle name. We put a ball in the bowl to slow her down, and keep her on split meals. She has relaxed around food, but she's never lost her habit of literally wolfing it down.

After she'd eaten, we discovered her second flaw. If she hops up on the couch, puts her paws on the windowsill, or navigates the stairs - she pumps a little gas and the children fall down laughing. In her defence, it's loud without being stinky.

We made her travel crate into a cosy den and let her sleep off her dinner in there while we took the kids to the Christmas Fayre at the school. It was an entirely wasted exercise. Cheap supermarket mince pies, plastic cups of boiling sweet wine and some guy with a pillow stuffed up his red suit handing out badly wrapped pencil cases. Overpriced games, jumble sales, and garish tinsel. These things didn't hold even one half the magic of one adorable puppy.

Late that evening, long after the bickering over whose turn it was to cuddle the puppy had stopped, and segued into bath time, and pyjamas, and sleep.... My husband went to run himself a hot bath while I stayed on the sofa, my new friend glued to my side. Well, when he realised, in a state of undress, that he had forgotten his book, he decided just to pop back downstairs and fetch it. After all, who was going to see? Brand New Watchdog Extraordinaire, that's who. From her reaction, I think a nude man was absolutely the weirdest thing she had ever seen, and she let him know that she wasn't at all pleased.

At bedtime, I had no intention of leaving her to cry in the kitchen. I put her bed next to mine, assuring myself that I could always move her later when she had settled in. Of course I didn't move her later. Each night, she still climbs up beside me and inveigles herself into my arms for a cuddle. She likes to be the little spoon, and you have to rub her belly. If you don't she will make you, pulling your hand with her paws to her tummy. When you whisper, "okay, it's time to go to sleep now, goodnight", she hops down and settles in her own bed.

The next morning, we got to know each other a little better. She picked up all the basic puppy stuff very fast - potty training, loose lead walking, basic words like Down and Sit. Stay was a little trickier. Flaw #3: since day one, she has always been a complete baby about left anywhere. If you are leaving her, she wants to come, too.

I haven't peed alone since the day she arrived.

Eventually, once she was cleared for walks by the vet, we would find out flaw #4. She hates traffic. She tucks her ears and tail in and peers nervously around your legs at the passing cars. If you have to cross the road, she stampedes to the other side as quickly as possible.

We were all head over heels for her within that first day, and she has only wormed her way deeper into our affections over the years. I am sure she loves us just as much as we love her. To this day, except for food, there is nothing in the world she loves more than snuggling up beside me and wriggling in between my arm and my body. I have read that dogs don't like hugs, but apparently she hasn't read the same books.