Our puppy has no respect for the two-metre rule

Since the beginning of the lockdown, Caroline has been congratulating herself for having bought a puppy ‘just in time’. She doesn’t mean it would have been impossible to get one after 23 March, because visiting a breeder is not an ‘essential’ journey. She means that a puppy is a great source of entertainment, as well as solace, when you’re cooped up in your home, particularly if you have children. It’s like having our very own therapy dog.

She’s a cavapoochon — a cross between a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a toy poodle and a bichon frise. A handbag dog, in other words. We had an interminable family discussion about what to name her, with the children seemingly engaged in a competition to come up with the most clichéd suggestions. Our eldest son, notionally the owner of the dog, wanted to call her ‘Biscuit’ or, failing that, ‘Cookie’. Our 16-year-old daughter wanted to call her ‘Caly’ — short for ‘Calypso’. ‘Why not just call her “Chavvy” and have done with it?’ I said. The 11-year-old suggested ‘Echo’, but thankfully that was ruled out when we discovered another cavapoochon owner — a trendy young man who lives nearby — had named his Echo. He glides along the pavement on his man-scooter with Echo peeping out from a papoose tied to his front. Pass the sick bag.

In the end we plumped for ‘Malinky’, which means ‘tiny’ in Czech. Caroline likes it because she’s half Czech and I like it because it means I can call the dog ‘stinky Malinky’. As the person who has to clear up her messes, I’ve begun to suspect that the ‘poo’ in her breed name is not a reference to poodle but to something else.