Merry Christmas

My flu has not only continued to disrupt my puppy training and socialisation plans but also Christmas preparations. Still, it's Christmas Eve and the presents are wrapped, food bought and we're all ready. My prediction is that Father Christmas is going to be very generous to Oliver. He is a very intelligent little pup which is fantastic for the plans we have for him. Despite the flu interruptions, he has already learned to sit, lie, come and wait. He responds really well to the combination of a clicker, treats and a lot of praise. Oli's little face just says 'I want to please!' Being intelligent means that he gets very bored and needs a lot of different toys and chews to keep him occupied between rest and training. A huge favourite so far are fish skin chews and a his pyramid that is filled with treats for him to rock and paw and work out how to get them to tip out of a hole in the top. He has a lot more exciting toys under the tree.

I was concerned about how behind we were with socialisation but thanks to a few trips up the busy high road, where we are staying for Christmas, he has met a host of colourful people, vehicles, markets etc including children in buggies, people with walking sticks, people pulling suitcases.... We have actually ticked off most of our list. After Christmas, we'll start some trips on busses, trains and trams. Oli has met a lot of dogs and loves Alfie the border collie/jack russell cross we are staying with. Alfie is teaching Oli the difference between playing with people and dogs and Oli is, unfortunately, reminding Alfie how much fun it is to be a pup and get away with accidents!

Wills is very jealous of the attention Oliver gives Alfie. William and Oli are getting on really well now. They pass much of the day together playing and sitting together and, as I hoped, William will break from his obsessions to play a game with Oliver or when Oliver comes to sit beside him. A problem we are having is that Oliver gets a lot of attention while he is travelling on the back of William's wheelchair for socialisation trips. While that is great for his experience in meeting people, it's difficult for William who doesn't like people fussing 'his dog' uninvited. Wills is getting more confidence talking to strangers about Oli but doesn't like them coming too close into his personal space to pet him. I will talk to the PAWS team about this after Christmas and see what they advise.

One of my greatest challenges of the week has been wrapping presents - totally impossible with a puppy in the same room! Merry Christmas everyone. I hope all doggies and their human families get the day they are hoping for tomorrow.

While the puppy chews the family get flu

Oliver has been home for nearly two weeks now. You's be right to be surprised there have been no blog entries since then and may have been thinking I'd been in way out of my depth and hadn't been able to find the time or energy to write. Well, you'd be partially right. Oliver needs to be watched every second of his waking time. He is very good and docile and so eager to please that he quickly stops what he is doing when asked but he chews everything. The casualties so far include the Christmas tree lights and my Mac laptop charger. As a journalist, I had no choice but to part with £50 just before Christmas to replace that. Of all the disposable junk we have in the house he chose that! He is adorable though and William and he are fast becoming the best friends I hoped they'd be. They are little tykes together though and Wills enjoys the rough and tumble play. A big task for me over the coming weeks of school holidays will be to train both of my boys to play and work together in a way more conducive to them being allowed out in shops and other public places together. I was told that establishing a good bond between them was the most important thing though and they are certainly doing that.

The main reason for lack of blogage has been that Oli's arrival home coincided with the arrival of flu! I've been really struck down and had no energy for all my well mapped out early training plans. We're behind on his socialisation but not doing too badly. We have builders at home so he's met plenty of strangers, often in unusual attire, as well as drills, skip lorries, pneumatic drills outside the window... so we're doing ok there. Over the last couple of days, I've been well enough to take the boys out and about. Oliver's unusual method of travelling beyond where his little legs will take him is getting a lot of attention and the petting he gets is taking him far towards the 'meet 100 strangers in the first six months' rule. He's seen cars, vans, school busses, trams and dogs of all shapes and sizes. He's even been round a supermarket from the safety of his bag so we're catching up. On the whole, Oliver takes everything in his stride. He was a bit wary of the school bus the first time he met it up close and personal but sits happily on the pavement now.

Just before Oliver came home, I asked for advice for our first few weeks. I'll blog about that in the coming days but will leave you with the main thing we've learned. You need newspaper, lots of it as well as several bottles on antibacterial spray, handwash and as many rolls of kitchen roll as you can fit in your house. Puppies pee for England.

William's Wish

William wished for a puppy and his wish was granted by the fantastic Starlight Foundation. They also granted his wish to visit Santa in Lapland by taking us to Lapland UK (William's health meant it impossible for us to get abroad this year). London Tonight reported on William's wish and you can watch it here http://bit.ly/gdc5gi

A photo montage of Oliver's first day home

We're ready!

Tomorrow's the day! Yesterday Ellie, Wills and I got all Oliver's things out and made his bed. (I thought 'business' was an appropriate page for his first toilet area.) William did a great job filling one of Oliver's chew toys with treats ready to put in his bedroom for him. William struggles with fine motor control, partly due to his Asperger's Syndrome but also due to the mild cerebral palsy he has. While he can read like a ten-year-old, he is unable to write his name and is totally unmotivated to learn to write, draw and do anything that requires him to use his hands to do anything more co-ordinated than pushing Thomas engines around the floor. Nearly all the toys I've selected for Oliver serve the dual purpose of giving William a task he finds challenging or doesn't like doing. Yesterday, he sat for a long time filling the ball. You'll notice from the picture that he is doing it with one hand, steadying himself with the other. William's cerebral palsy has given him spasticity, or hypertonia in his legs and hypotonia, meaning a lack of tone, in his trunk. This makes it very difficult for him to bring both hands together to do a task as one is always supporting his trunk. The next step will be to encourage him to kneel and hold the ball in one hand, filling it with the other - one of his physio exercises! William isn't too keen on physio but playing with and doing things for Oliver, well, that's a different thing all together!

Two sleeps....

Oliver's crate with a cosy bed (and lots of newspaper!) is ready in the corner of our living room, his bowls are washed and in the kitchen, thanks to 'buy one get one free' offers on the food he's been having with his breeder, I have about 60 days of food for him. The car is booked for collecting him on Wednesday and the weather forecast even looks kind for us. After getting to grips with annual versus life and cover capped per year or per condition... and after reeling over the expense of some of the policies, Oliver is insured. He has his second vaccination tomorrow, before we collect him, but we have an appointment with our vet next week to familiarise him and discuss his care. We're ready and William, Hope and Ellie are counting down the hours! I'm looking forward to Wednesday too but with a few nerves about the huge task I'm about to undertake. I've been exchanging tweets with a fellow journalist who is also about to get a puppy. We've been likening the time gap between choosing a puppy and bringing him home to the end stages in pregnancy. Like those final weeks before a baby is born, we've both been full of excitement but I feel a bit like the end of a first pregnancy now when you begin to worry about your ability to take care of a precious new life. As I did when Hope was born, I'm turning to books and those more experienced than me and I know I'll do OK. Nerves are good I think. They show I care and that I'm not naive about the difference Oliver will make to my life. It will enhance all of our lives, not just William's, but it is a new responsibility for me, all be it one that I welcome with open arms.

After Thomas

Hope, Ellie and I spent a snowed in afternoon today watching the movie About Thomas It's a wonderful film about how a Golden Retriever called Thomas (named after the engine of course, although in real life the dog was called Henry after Thomas' green friend) helped a little boy called Dale with classic autism to open up and explore the world around him. I watched it on my own last week and sobbed my whole way through. I could identify with every agonising scene from the public melt downs through the struggle to get a diagnosis to the hope that the simple, straightforward relationship with an animal will be easier for William understand than those with his peers. The film is beautifully acted and I felt so much for Dale's mum, Nuala, and her husband Jamie. While I live through William's trantrums, anxieties and frustrations on a daily basis, I am lucky that his Asperger's Syndrome enables him to be verbal and, when he is relaxed and it's on his terms, very giving with people he has known for a long time and likes.

Hope and Ellie were equally moved by the film. I think it helped them a lot to see some of their brother's behaviours they find so difficult to cope with acted out in front of them. It certainly gave them some hope to see the difference Thomas (AKA Henry) made to Dale's life and the calming impact this had on his family. We had a little laugh when Dale repeated swear words in a parrot fashion from how he first heard them. William is very good at this, especially at the most inappropriate times. William himself joined us to watch part of the film - the bits where Dale watched Thomas the Tank Engine. Just a few seconds were shown but this was enough for William to jump up and down in excitement, declaring, "I know what that episode is called it's called Trust Thomas," before demanding that I "have to know" exactly what video Dale was watching. William's lack of ability to put himself in someone else's position and see a situation form their position means he simply can't accept that I don't have the answers to all his questions and he gets very frustrated when I can't tell him what he wants - no needs - to know.

Dale is now grown up and, over the years, Nuala and Jamie have experienced all of the stress and anxieties that go hand in parenting a child with autism. Nuala gives a very open account of the horrendous fight she had to get the professionals to accept Dale was autistic in her book 'A Friend Like Henry.' You can read more about this remarkable family's story here .

Hope, Ellie and I finished the film feeling inspired and even more excited than ever about the arrival of Oliver into out lives. Less than an hour later, after a series of phone calls with Starlight and Oliver's breeder, we found out we don't have long to wait now. Oliver is coming home with us on Wednesday. We have just 'six sleeps' to get ready.