Homer was born on 14th July 2004, a lardy little bundle of naughtiness (he looked like a football with legs).

I had scoured the internet looking for a chunky blob of a labrador and found some pups for sale in Wigan. We drove the 120 miles and collected him, the new proud owners of what we thought was a cute little puppy - we couldn't wait to get home to show Barley, our other Labrador (the bestest nicest labrador ever, and the reason we decided to buy another of the these lovely creatures)

Barley obviously had telepathic knowledge beforehand that this cute and fluffy friendly bundle would dictate our lifes for the next 3 years. Barley spent the next month peering round the doorway and resolutely refusing to come anywhere near the new arrival

Homer however took to dominating our lives from day 1. Toilet training was easy for him, he didn't bother. This resulted in us having very wet feet for about 3 weeks. Finally, he actually understood that the squeaky high pitched voices we shrieked "good boy good boy!" actually meant something, and maybe peeing on the laminate floor wasn't as much fun as he originally thought.


Next came the introduction of the crate - I'd read all the books about how pups 'love their own little environment and would welcome the crate as a little sanctuary'
Unfortunately Homer never read the same books..

As my partner, Steve was on night shift it worked well in our dog duties - He would push the exhausted Homer pup into his crate at 3:00am by laying a trail of rawhide chews into the crate. Homer would wait till 3:05am before howling for 45mins then finally giving in....until 5:00am. As it was summer, the first sign of light and he was ready to get up and play. I can sympathise with these parents of hyperactive children when they moan that they only sleep for a couple of hours, as we were now the proud parents of a hyperactive labrador

We gradually grew into Homers new routine for us and decided maybe we didn't need sleep anyway...I did persevere with the crate for 12 months. After which I packed it up in an almighty heap (which I now move on a regular basis under the sofa, beds, anywhere I can store the ugly bulky thing as obviously the pup of the future will love his new crate....) whilst Homer took residence on my king size duvet. And quite happily slept to whatever time I crawled out of bed without
a murmur. 1-0 to Homer