Our daily schedule…..

Our daily routine is settling nicely so that I am now finding there are times of the day that I can call my own. Our alarm goes off at 5.45am, but the pups get up about 5.30 and have their own way of waking us up by wandering around the room and trying to get up onto the bed, as yet they are still too small to jump up but they make enough noise to let us know they are there. 6.30am sees us in the kitchen having breakfast followed by half an hour running around, playing and fighting and by 7.30 they are both asleep again.


They’ll next be up around 9am when we have a walk outside in the garden. This is taking longer each day as they find more to explore and although they are still unable to come down the stairs in the house, they do manage the steps down from the decking, even though in Brandy’s case it’s just a matter of diving off and hoping for a soft landing.

Next, another hours sleep and then we have some training – at the moment they can sit, but have very twitching bums so they can only stay still for about 10 seconds – which for a puppy is probably an absolute age, so we are now working on stay – this is going to take a lot of treats. I have to spend some time with each of them on their own, as they distract each other all the time. Brandy seems to have the shorter concentration span when they are both together although he does reasonably ok on his own. When we are out walking they will need to sit and wait at the roadside before crossing so this is something we need to get right in the next 2 weeks as that’s when they’ll be able to go out for real.

They are then ready for another sleep and I can usually go out for a couple of hours, leaving them in the kitchen. The worst they have got up to so far whilst I've been out is getting the tea towels down and using them instead of their bed. So, it’s easy to move things above puppy height before I go out.


We have another hour of madness when I get back and they are generally sleeping when Neil comes in from work – it can take a bit of effort to get them up to go and meet him sometimes, but then we seem to have 2-3 hours of madness. They seem to like the evenings and spend the longest time playing, chasing around the house and generally causing chaos. This works well to tire them before bedtime and they now understand that ‘upstairs’ means it’s bedtime. And then, we’re back into the same routine tomorrow.