He has only two modes: rushing round and round, or asleep. ‘Wait until he sits down,’ said the trainer. Quite a burly ant, since you ask.Īnd because he’s a hound, he races everywhere with his nose touching the ground.Īt puppy training class recently, he dashed round all the other dogs - retrievers and labradors and sensible spaniels. Only the other day I saw him giving a hard time to an ant. Now four months old, he’s about halfway to his final size of 1ft high and weighing around 10lb. Even in his sleep.įor some reason, he was issued with the ears of a particularly large kangaroo. His tail curls over his back like a scorpion’s sting and is locked in permanent wag mode. He’s light brown with a thin overlay of black hair, white socks on each paw and a flash of white on top of the head. My boy, Pepe, looks like a hairy sausage roll. She points out that the breed has been around since the 15th century. Quite rightly, she gets a little upset when people mistake them for Jack Russells. Easy-care coats, lively, playful, biddable and trainable.’īetty’s friend Bett Eyles, who lives in a village outside Swindon, is secretary of the Podengo Owners’ Association, with 136 members. ‘They have an excellent temperament and are good with children and adults. ‘It’s a small breed with a big-dog mind,’ says Betty. Now there are around 700 in this country. In 2002, she imported the first wire-coated Pequenos (there are smooth-coated ones, too) and over the next few years brought into Britain 46 different bloodlines to give her a large enough gene pool, so the breed was not too closely bred. Pepe, pictured with Colin, is light brown with a thin overlay of black hair, white socks on each paw and a flash of white on top of the headīetty, a highly respected breeder of Border terriers, greyhounds and Griffon Vendeens - a short-legged French hunting terrier - decided to focus on a smaller breed when she started to suffer from arthritis.Įnter the Pod. Ears up, head cocked, he must have been invented by Walt Disney. Tails thrashing, tongues licking, paws pattering against your legs, it was a severe overdose of cuteness.Įven in this company, one wire-haired pup stood out. As she opened the door, out tumbled three pups - the collective noun, I think, is a ‘squirm’. That’s right: on an iPod.ĭays later, I travelled to an Oxfordshire farm to meet Betty Judge, ‘the Queen of the Podengos’. The Skye terrier, the Manchester terrier and the Cardigan Welsh corgi are sadly classified as vulnerable. If there is a downside to all this, it’s that some of the old British dogs are losing popularity. Those are handbag dogs, but there is a similar burst of popularity for wolf-types such as Akitas and Siberian huskies. For example, there’s been a rush for Maltese dogs since the actress Halle Berry got one while others have copied the American socialite Paris Hilton’s smooth chihuahua. He uprooted the marsh marigolds from the garden pond and left them to die on a log pileĬelebrities are much to blame for this trend. Pepe has embarked on a long-term campaign to remove all Colin's socks from their drawer and relocate them in the greenhouse. Well, when I was growing up, there were only about three types of dog: labradors, which posh people kept behind grilles in the back of their Volvos snuffling Pekingese, which fussy old ladies dragged behind them while the rest of us had to be happy with the product of unauthorised alfresco canine coupling - or, as we called them, ‘mongrels’. And when it comes to charm, this boy could sell time-shares in northern Iraq.Īnyway, why did I choose a breed of dog that most people have never heard of? I tell you, he makes Tracey Emin look like the housewife of the year. As for the rest, I can see a blue silk tie, several used train tickets, several regurgitated biscuits, three well-rotted apples, a utility bill, assorted underwear (both male and female) and two tennis balls. Two bizzy- lizzies removed from the flower-bed to the loo. He has placed his objets trouvés all over the house. He has almost completed another project to turn the house into the sort of exhibition you might find in a modern art gallery. He’s also attacked the potato barrel which contains the crop that I’ve harvested from the garden and is engaged in taking each potato, one by one, back down the garden and burying them. He uprooted the marsh marigolds from the garden pond and left them to die on a log pile. He has embarked on a long-term campaign to remove all my socks from their drawer and relocate them in the greenhouse. Colin says that his new puppy Pepe makes Tracey Emin look like the housewife of the yearĬurrently, he’s very busy.
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