An update from Major James Bigglesworth - aka Biggles - about life at the CFZ and his training programme

I woke up this morning a bit earlier than usual and had a good stretch and yawn to get my body ready for the day ahead. I nuzzled the old dear awake by thrusting my cold nose in her face – I don’t see why anyone else should be asleep if I am awake – and then proceeded to scratch and wash myself in order to annoy the grumpy old git as he tried in vain to return to sleep. It is great fun doing these ablutions on the bed as I can make it bounce up and down when cleaning my privates, which causes utterances of extreme annoyance from the two-leggeds lying under the bedclothes. That is if they have managed to reclaim any of them because I usually try and get as much of them as possible to lay on myself.

A good game is to sniff loudly at the air that comes through the gap at the bottom of the closed door and then try to force open the door with a hefty kick of my front legs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If it does then I break out and head for Graham’s door to make sure that he is awake. I never bother with Oll’s door – he doesn’t get up till 11 in the morning and I know it would be wasted energy trying to rouse him.

Then it is off downstairs at a rate of knots, either with Graham or the grumpy old git – no use wasting time walking sedately when there are two cats downstairs to annoy and garden borders to check out. Sometimes the old dear gets up first and lets me outside – she is nice – she is the one who gives me food and I follow her around all day like a shadow making sure that she is not doing anything that I am going to miss. These humans don’t use the garden bushes for emptying their bladders, which is something that I don’t quite understand, but they are peculiar creatures in lots of ways. So when the old dear goes upstairs I sit on her chair to keep it warm for her. I am not sure that she appreciates my warm bottom on her chair from the way she sighs when she returns downstairs, but I am a creature of habit and I accidentally did it once so have to carry on doing so.

From about 8 pm in the evening I incessantly try to round her up to send her to bed so that I can go with her and root around in the bin and reveal the grumpy old git’s disgusting habit of eating pork pies in bed. I like telling tales on him – I pretend that I am a mummy’s boy and that is what it is all about – telling tales. I get told off for dragging wrappers around the bedroom floor and on to the bed, but he gets told off too for eating such things upstairs in the first place.

They tell me I have some disgusting habits too, but I really do not know what they are on about. Drinking out of the lavatory is fun – it is just the right height for me to get my head in and there is a never ending supply of water to lap up. I do not understand why they make weird noises of disgruntlement when I try to kiss them goodnight after having one of these night time drinks.

Ahhh it is a great life being the alpha male in the CFZ household – the training is going quite well and I nearly have my pack exactly where I want them. They keep trying to usurp me but I foil them at every turn because I am a dog and I am cleverer than they are.