How do you know if your dog is normal?

A canine conundrum plus four quick cheer-you up videos...

Pixel & me; which is more bonkers? I am wearing Gucci - the dog’s lavish coat is her own.

I didn’t think I would ever be ‘that’ person: you know, the one who joins the Facebook group for the breed of dog you have. I mean, I love our little Welsh Terrier Pixel, but I am not obsessed, I don’t let her lick my face or talk about her as if she is my fifth child. If you saw us together you wouldn’t say ‘Awww, Lorraine’s mad about that dog ’and roll your eyes affectionately. But I couldn’t go on living with her any longer without answering the question ‘is my dog normal?’. Drastic measures were needed, so I signed up to TWO Welsh Terrier Facebook groups, no proof of ownership required.  After some nervous scrolling I sort of regretted my decision! Not because of the fabulously Welsh Terrier crazy owners I discovered there, they were great, though the person who made a necklace of their dog’s face was a little OTT, ditto all the dog birthday cakes, but I had second thoughts about my need to know after the things I read about these knee-high nitwits.

At first the repetitive use of the words rascal, menace, loudmouth, feisty, stubborn, and pest were a tad alarming but as anyone with any kind of terrier knows they are more Joker than Batman. They aren’t cuddly, there is no soppy Labrador like adoration with a terrier. They are BIG characters with a fizzy energy, terriers are spontaneous, surprising, hysterical and charismatic hounds to be around; like some of my favourite humans. We knew this about terriers because we’d had an Airedale so we also understood that the ‘hunt mode’ setting is permanently switched on, we knew about the chewing and the chasing. It’s the other stuff that confused us.

But it all started to make sense when I noted on the Facebook groups that the most recommended book for educating a Welsh terrier was called: “When Pigs Fly: training success with impossible dogs” then I felt much better about Pixel’s quirks. Her extreme human-like naughtiness was normal, we weren’t bad owners, and she was not nuts, though perhaps we were having not done this kind of research before buying the maddest mutt in town. One wit commented: “Welsh terrier dog training books? You’ll have to look in the fiction section”.

The more I read about Welshies the more I realised I didn’t need to question my dog owning sanity, as it turns out ours is perfectly normal for a Welsh Terrier and I began to see her idiosyncrasies were in fact at the more sensible end of the Welshie scale. Some of the stuff I read was quite unbelievable I mean why would a dog ….