One Mand and her dog

THIS pup of ours in a menace. A mischievous ball of non-stop growing woolly fluff with a personality to die for.

He is now a fully fledged Pugh and although the children still have to be reminded to feed him and put him out for his business, they love him through and through.
He's a constant scavenger for foodscraps which annoys me no end but I suppose when all you get at mealtimes is the same old dried food, anything with a waft of MSG or sausage fat is bound to get him all fired up and ready to nab.

It's got to the point that I know EXACTLY when he's upto no good purely by his footsteps. He's always coming into our walk-in robe to steal items from my side of the closet. Usually nice, elasticy, chewy items that are small enough to smuggle out from under my nose.

But his footsteps give him away every time. The slow ... slow.... slow mooching around then quick.... Quick.... QUICK ... get out of here QUICK sort of fast paced fancy footwork results in me legging it round the living room in a frenzied attempt of tackling him to the ground and getting back the stolen property intact. A number of our smalls have become casualties before now and we are running out fast.

Just tonight, he ate the signed contract for the new house and had a go at my chicken korma. He was more than welcome to the coconut dish as it tasted nothing like what I'm used to. If he hadn't ate the contract maybe I would have been tempted to swap my lack-lustre Indian dish for just that knowing that it probably had more flavour.

When I'm doing the housework, he's right there with me. I clean the bath, he's virtually in it. I wash down the floors, his molars are around the mophead. He remains firmly by my side when I'm on the laptop and growls at the screensaver as he doesn't know it's actually him.

I don't know how he'll fare when we move to the new house down the road, around the corner and over the way.
We collected the keys on Monday after a text from the conveyancer's office informed us that settlement had taken place as planned. I was at the hairdresser's at the time indulging in some coiffure treatments so on my way back home, collected the keys.

After waiting for husband to come home from work, we all piled into the car to see our new investment. The vendors were still in the manic throes of moving out so we couldn't really get to have the look around that we wanted to but our time will come soon enough.

And there follows some real work...