Two and a half kilos of tantrum
She weighs only 2.5 kg but she knows exactly what she wants and what she does not want. We have had her now for five months and we love her. She is about two and a half years old but still has a lot to learn. The first two years of her life she lived with an elderly lady in Leeds and we suspect that, except from a walk around the block to do her business, she did not go outside a lot. OUR TUPPY!
She loves being outside but is not much bothered with the garden. She wants to go there where all the nasty (interesting for her) smells are. When she tells me that she wants to go out she does that in no uncertain terms by running around the table, comming up to me, not wanting to sit down and when I do not react, start barking at me. When I get up and walk to the garden door, she sits down, looks at me and turns around to sit at the top of the stairs (our front door is downstairs) and waits for me to go down with her. Sometimes, when I am not quick enough, she goes down on her own and expects me to follow her. Once outside she never seems to be in a hurry to do something. It has to be at the right place, turns around a few times and lifts her leg. Yes, she is a girl but I have also seen her lifting her leg against a dustbin after sniffing it for quite a long time. Obviously her aim is not very good but she tries her best!
She does not like getting up in the morning and after coming back from our morning walk she spends most of the time in her basked resting from a tiring night's sleep. However, at 12.15 she gets up and tells me it is time to prepare lunch. She does not get her food until later but you never know, there may be some titbits falling off the table. After our lunch Alan and I have a cup of tea in the living room and watch the news. As soon as I want to sit down, she tells me it is time for her to go out. It is no good trying to ignore her - she does not give up so I give in and take her out while my tea is getting cold.
Sometime between 3 and 4 PM she tells me it is time for her food. When we got her she had no problem eating the biscuits. She gobbled them up in no time. Now, when I only put dry biscuits in her bowl, she has a look at it, picks one up and spits it out. I have tried it out but she rather goes without food for a few days then eating dry biscuits. Obviously she would not starve. In the end she does eat them but she does not enjoy them. So she has won and I always mix something else with her biscuits - some leftover bits of meat or whatever. It does not have to be much but the biscuits have to be mixed well and smell of whatever meat is mixed with it. Then she eats the lot!
At 6 PM she tells me again that it is time for me to go to the kitchen and start the food preparation. I normally do. I prepare the food but may leave the cooking for another hour or so. After our meal when we go in the living room again to watch TV and have a cup of tea, the same thing happens as after lunch - as soon as I sit down she tells me she has to go out. And this is in summer when our garden doors are open most of the time!
On normal evenings I watch TV sitting on a two seater sofa and Tuppy lies next to me. Sometimes, however, I feel like putting my feet up and the sofa is really large enough for the pair of us. No way! I might touch her or the cushion she is lying against and that's it. There is not enough space. She is really annoyed and shows it. She jumps off the sofa, runs a few times around the room, jumps into her basket, attacks the blanket in it and settles down for a while. Then she comes back to me, jumps on the sofa, realizes that it is still not large enough for the pair of us and the whole thing starts all over again!
On normal evenings, Alan and I watch TV and go to bed between 10 and 11. On one particular evening Alan wanted to watch a special programme later in the evening but it did not interest me so I decided to do some more sewing. Tuppy did not ike that at all, that was the time we should have gone to bed! She followed me into my sewing room and started barking at me. I ignored it for a while and then told her off which made her really mad. She took off on a run, ran into the living room, jumped on Alan, who did not really wanted her at that particular time, jumped off him, ran to the place on the sofa where I normally sit and started attacking the quilt that covers the sofa. After a while she stopped, came into my sewing room and laid down in her basket uner the table. For about five minutes and then it started all over again! After the third time I decided to take her out and when we came back in she settled down until we went to bed.
Yes, she runs rings around us, she gets real tantrums and we love and spoil her!
