Now family pets are supposed to behave in a traditional family pet away. When a visitor goes to the house the family pet will greet the visitor with a wagging tail and maybe even an affectionate lick. When the family pet is told to get in her basket she does so without question and watches proceedings with lively eyes and wagging tale but nothing more.



This scene is acted out in thousands and thousands of households throughout the world many times every single day of every single year. It is a scene which I long to take part in with border collie Poppy dog. It is a scene that is so far removed from what happens when I visit my daughter's house that it could be regarded as pure fantasy.

Let me try to paint the actual picture for you. When I visit my daughter I knock on the door. Poppy barks. So far so good. That is what she's supposed to do like a good protective guard dog. But when I open the door and go in the house she realises who it is and seems to lose whatever modicum of self-control she has ever had.

The first thing she does is make a very high-pitched squealing noise which I assume is one of sheer delight and expectation. What she is expecting I still have not been able to work out but I can only think that it provides her with a legitimate excuse for going half crazy.

Almost immediately following the squeal I find she is trying to make herself into a scarf for me by wrapping her body around my neck or - so it seems. You would be truly amazed at how high an eleven month old border collie can jump. I am six feet tall and she makes a highly creditable attempt to land on my head.

I thought I had found a way of counteracting this by crouching down to doggie level to stroke her. Unfortunately, Poppy seems to regard this as me becoming a doggy chum for her so she proceeds to leap at me again to try to knock me to the ground whilst at the same time biting my ears. Not very dignified. All this happens in the hallway of the house.

Eventually she is restrained, still squealing with delight and we progress to the living room. By this time she has calmed slightly and dashes off to find her little mouse toy which she places carefully on my knee for me to throw. Now throwing a little mouse toy for a wild the eleven-month-old border collie in a confined space is not to be recommended but what choice do I have? She is panting with pleasure and looking at me with such alert expectant eyes that I compromise and throw it.

There is a high degree of skill involved in throwing a little mouse toy for a border collie in a confined space. If it were an Olympic sport I would win gold. If you don't throw it far enough or quickly enough she catches it in mid-air almost before it has left your hand. If you throw it too high she leaps and twists in the air and lands on whatever happens to be underneath her at the time. If you throw it too far she skids in the process of catching it and crashes into the furniture.

Stupidly, and I have not yet learnt this lesson, I think that by doing this half a dozen times she will tire of it and then go about whatever her daily routine is. Absolutely not. She never tires of it and I am convinced that if I were to spend several hours doing this with her at the end of the whole procedure she would still dump the little mouse on my knee and look at me with those expectant eyes.

And it is those eyes that make it so hard to become cross with her. To her this is probably one of the highlights of her day so who am I to spoil that for her. Until she learns the role of family pet I will continue to be her doggie chum and Olympic little mouse toy thrower.