Our new dog, Max, arrived today. He’s a rescue dog (or rather five month old puppy) from Spain and came in a van via France and the Channel Tunnel.

Incredibly the van arrived within five minutes of the time they said they would. After such a long drive I was expecting them to be four or five hours late.

Our first task was to give the dog a shower as it was very muddy and had been travelling since early Tuesday evening. I was expecting this to be quite a struggle. Far from it, Max appeared to relish it.

The task now is to housetrain him – I’ve never known a dog to pee so much – and then move on to other training. He’s already virtually destroyed his first toy – a soft Gnasher – but seems to love it.