In which, dear listener, we consider how nurture beats nature, as we end up with a Staffordshire x puppy who believes he’s a lurcher. Quite how this worked out we have no idea, but there’s little doubt that Biscuit, our ten month old staffy-type pest, thinks he’s a long dog. Just a short longdog, that’s all. And we wonder how often this sort of thing happens.

If you didn’t already know, it all began as one of those accidents, where we reluctantly took on an unwanted pup who had been rejected twice, most recently by a family with kids – he was too boisterous for them. I say ‘reluctantly’  because we had planned for another lurcher, but this poor little soul was around eight weeks old, and in need, and so…

We’re fairly experienced, and have had difficult dogs – like our late Jade, a lurcher rescued from the streets of London who had a tendency to shriek at everything, and to try and bite visitors, but who was gentleness personified with family members. But anyway, this new, lively scrap was young, and could surely be trained. Besides, decades ago we had rescued a full staffy who was the softest dollop imaginable, How hard could it be?

So we sailed into this with all the confidence of someone walking over the cliff edge in a thick fog…

Thus the new arrival was introduced to the rest of the pack – two much older long dogs. Conscious of his bull terrier element, we didn’t want a name that had any aggressive sound to it – no shouting “Come here, Fang the Destroyer!” in the local fields – and so he became Biscuit (or Ick-Bick, when he was really good).

At first he was what you might expect. Poorly house-trained, ridiculously full of energy, always hungry, and bitey. Not aggressive, but heavily focussed on sinking his teensy teeth indiscriminately into pullovers, cushions, shoes – and any limbs we left lying about (in fact, he has so far totally destroyed at least nine pairs of shoes).

We soldiered on, despite the destruction of property. He took to ‘Sit’ quickly, and his house-training improved week on week. Then we noticed that he was attempting to bond with our thirteen year old female long dog, Chilli (a deerhound x greyhound).

Now, Chilli is a total boss dog, being solitary when she wants to be, annoyingly sociable when wanting attention, and a demanding Empress to other dogs, who she dominates. Once they understand she’s in charge, she plays with them enthusiastically, but she won’t be subservient to any other hound. Rottweilers have crouched, grovelled and shown their bellies to her – literally.

As our ailing but amiable  old fellow, Django, was keeping out of this, we feared disaster. Chilli did not suffer fools gladly, let’s put it that way.

We tried not to interfere. Dogs are dogs, and if you’re fortunate, they find their own acceptable levels of interaction eventually.  Biscuit was certainly unbearably persistent and very demanding with Chilli, enough to earn some savage snaps, snarls, and once a bloody ear, but he would not give up. And after a couple of months, something interesting happened. She began to initiate bitey-face with him, as she had with Django when they were young.

He responded with joy, and despite never knowing when to stop, entered into daily sessions, the two of them filling the house regularly with what sounded like an unfeasibly large, starving wolf pack engaged in mortal combat. Mouthies and bitey-face became a big part of his life.

At the same time, our teensy monster had clearly been observing both Chilli and Django with fascination. Following Django’s lead, he learned how to counter-surf in earnest, and how to try poking the fridge open (perpetual Djangoid behaviours). Then he started sprawling and sleeping upside down in exactly the same position as our lurchers, and trying to copy some of their usual postures – even though he was too stubby to manage all of them.

And we wondered about this… there was every sign that he thought himself a long dog. He began to get pickier about his food, like Chilli, and to alternate mad zoomies with long naps – and yes, whilst many dogs do a range of these sort of things, Biscuit appeared very much to have modelled himself on his adults. Which was either amusing or horrifying, depending on what you think of lurcher habits.

So, nurture does appear to be winning out. We lost dear Django to arthritis and Cushings earlier this year, but Chilli and Biscuit are now a classic odd couple. A tall, slender black long dog with a white mask, and a short-legged staffy x determined to walk, play, sleep and live like a lurcher.

Impostor, or honorary member of that noble clan? We are inclined towards the latter – and are relieved that we didn’t rescue a goat. There’s only so much chewing a household can take…

Back in a couple of days with some weird book stuff, and then maybe more magnificent lurchery things. You can subscribe for free to be updated when we post – it’s top left on computers, but where it is on mobile phones, we have no idea…