Oh George! Your new pup will make Lady Gaga look low-maintenance: As the Chancellor gets a cute bichon frise, a doting fellow owner has a warning



George Osborne has gone on Twitter to show off Downing Street's newest four-legged resident, a bichon frise puppy called Lola.



The Chancellor admitted of his family pet: 'Some early issues with toilet training... but we don't care, we love her.'

Hear, hear, says SARAH VINE, proud owner of a bichon frise called Snowy...



T he date was late January, cold and dark.

Dirty snow on the ground, and nothing but credit card bills, detox shakes and tax returns: the gloomiest, most depressing time of year.

Perhaps that was what made me do it; that, and the fact that I’m a sucker for a sob story.

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'Kings of cute': Sarah Vine's bichon frise Snowy, left, is shamed after eating all of her owner's sushi, while George Osborne's latest family addition Lola, right, has had some early issues with toilet training



He was an unwanted Christmas present, they said.

A small, male bichon frise puppy, ten weeks old. Eyes like chocolate buttons, fur as soft as pussy willow, all wobbly and scared.

Also, as I later found out, teeming with fleas and as malodorous as a goat. It was love at first sight.



It was also sheer madness. Aside from the fact that we already had one perfectly excellent dog, a Jack Russell/ whippet cross called Mars (now sadly deceased), I have two children and a full-time job.

There is not enough room in our house to swing a cat, let alone accommodate a rampaging puppy.



But then, dogs are like children: if you think too hard about it, you would never have any at all.

All puppies are, by definition, cute. But a bichon puppy takes the concept to a whole other level.



Bichons are the kings of cute, the sultans of soppy, the Olympic champions of adorability.



In the doghouse: Snowy tangles himself in a computer cable after jumping onto Sarah's desk

Walk down the street with a bichon, and even traffic wardens are nice to you.

It’s not just that bichons look adorable; it’s also that they are adorable. They have the sweetest and sunniest of dispositions, the kindest and most patient of personalities.

There is not the first aggressive thought in the space between those fluffy ears of theirs.

I have never once heard ours growl, even when dressed in a tutu and fairy wings, or being wheeled around the house in a doll’s pram.

Owning a bichon is basically like having a very jolly, very affectionate and slightly greedy toddler around the place.

Ours - Snowy - has a vast collection of soft toys, for example, that he has stolen from the children.

'Owning a bichon is like having a very jolly, very affectionate and slightly greedy toddler around the place '

Whenever he is not feeling very well (usually when he’s eaten something he shouldn’t), he actually cuddles them. The rest of the time he affectionately chews off their eyes and noses.

Like most toddlers, he can’t really be left alone. Woe betide us if we try to go out, even for the shortest of times.

The look on his face as we depart for the school run is such a skilful combination of anguish and resentment, I sometimes wonder whether he might not be the reincarnation of some great actor.

I picture Marlon Brando... trapped in the body of an overgrown teddy bear.

In the early days his separation anxiety was so extreme we had to have him with us at all times.

I actually became one of those mad women who keep a dog in their handbag, since as well as being clingy he was also incredibly lazy.

We would take him for walks, and he would simply lie down and refuse to get up again. At one point I even contemplated getting him a doggy pram, until my husband explained that he would actually have to leave if I did.

There was also an issue with cleanliness.

Did I do that? The adorable bichon frise looks sheepish as he is shown a wedge shoe he has ruined

Mars was one of those wonderful short-haired, self-cleaning dogs, of the kind that only need a bath when they have been rolling in fox poo, or doing any of the other revolting things that dogs like to do when their owners aren’t looking.

Snowy, on the other hand, makes Lady Gaga look low-maintenance.

He needs twice weekly baths and regular trims, and because bichons don’t shed their hair (which also makes them suitable for people who are allergic to dogs), he requires regular brushing to avoid matting.

He gets all manner of unspeakables stuck in his whiskers. And as a puppy he suffered very badly from dingleberries (don’t ask) stuck in his fur, which I must admit pushed even the limits of my affection.

Despite my best efforts, he still looks like a dirty sheepskin rug most days (hence his nickname Sheepy).

Chewed up: Sarah's favourite boots were destroyed by Snowy, who has a taste for expensive footwear

But he loves his baths so much that he has been known to jump in with the children - to their great delight - whereupon he immediately shrinks to half his size and you realise what a terrible weed he is beneath all that white fluff.

One of the trickiest things about bichons is their dim grasp of the concept of personal space.

Having had one very obedient dog that slept downstairs in his designated bed and only came up in the morning to respectfully request that I open the back door, it took me some time before I realised that this was simply not an arrangement Snowy’s bichon brain could compute.

Some progress has now been made, in that he now no longer sleeps on my actual head or underneath my pillow, and he has given up trying to perch on my shoulder like a parrot when I’m driving the car.

But if I shut the bedroom door even for a minute, he throws himself at it with the violence and desperation of someone trapped in the boot of a car that is slowly sinking.

Elsewhere, he can be a terrible diva. Can I get him to use the dog-flap, installed at vast expense?



Can I hell.

My daughter and I spent an entire week trying to coax him in and out through the damn thing with bits of roast chicken, to no avail.

She even tried to demonstrate, by putting her head through it herself, whereupon she got stuck and had to be eased back out with olive oil behind the ears.

He simply carried on pawing at the woodwork.

Speaking of expense, owning a bichon is not a cost-neutral exercise.

They steal constantly: toothbrushes, shoes, tights, toys, post. You name it, if Snowy can carry it, he’ll pinch it - and then chew it to death.

The shoes are a bit of an issue: a pup psychologist might say he’s trying to stop us from going out by systematically devouring all the footwear in the house.

'He destroyed my favourite boots and shredded my trendy black and yellow wedges'

His favourite (and the most financially disastrous) are my husband’s work shoes and the children’s school ones; he also destroyed my favourite boots, bought on holiday in Italy a few years ago, and shredded my trendy black and yellow wedges.

Expensive footwear aside, the bichon’s other obsession is food.

He will break into the bin, raid the vegetable patch and lick the pavement in search of the tiniest, most rancid of morsels.

He once broke into a bag of cheese that a guest had brought to dinner; and I still haven’t quite forgiven him for the time he ate an entire sushi takeaway, chopsticks included.

Last week, in the time it took me to unload the shopping into the fridge, he managed to get his nose into a large bag of guinea pig feed, only to spend the next few hours throwing up all over the house.

The thing is, though, we love him. Whenever he has one of his ‘bichon blitzes’ (a characteristic of the breed, in which they charge around like loons until collapsing exhausted), we all join in.

It’s very silly, of course, and wholly undignified, but somehow chasing a mad white furball around the park makes me happy in ways I had never imagined possible.