Poppy has always been good at sleeping, but since Christmas, she has been sleeping more and more in her crate.

When no amount of shaking and plumping would make her existing bedding look soft and inviting, we decided that Something Had to be Done. Poppy is a dog, and therefore should be fully equipped to lie on the ground, but the sound of her bones hitting the tiled floor as she lies down is quite revolting. She does not complain, but we wince as her knees (elbows?) bang on the floor, convinced that it cannot be doing her any good.

We keep telling her she is too big to be a lap dog

The duvet we sacrificed when she first arrived has collapsed into a sorry, thin, slightly lumpy, grey and nasty mess. It is no longer even trying to look like a suitably comfortable lining for her crate. The pillow we gave her to use when she lies next to our bed has somehow become lumpy, grubby, and barely an inch thick. Her bathmat in front of the fire merely pretends to be slightly softer than the bare floor. Washing them only reduces the greyness slightly, and causes grave embarrassment as I skulk about trying to arrange them with the least worst parts outward-facing on the washing line.

Only the cushion that our friends gave her the day she arrived has any proper comfort to offer. It has a new cover, made out of an old cardigan, and it would be hard to tell that she has made several attempts to disembowel it. Unfortunately, it is rather smaller than she is, and parts of her spill over the edges as she tries to curl herself onto it.

Discipline seems to have slipped somewhat since she first arrived

We decided that we would get hold of a proper mattress for her, to make her crate a more inviting and cosy den. With the help of the local online information group and Google Streetview, we headed off to a place down on the coast, where they cut foam to size. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the owner agreed with me that a dog of twenty to twenty five kilos would be happy with the foam I had selected, and two days later, we had a piece of high density, three inch thick foam, exactly the right size to fit inside her crate.

Armed with some cheap soft furnishing fabric, my trusty old sewing machine and every pin I have ever owned, I made it a snug cover. So snug, in fact, that I had enormous difficulty putting it on. As I stitched the opening closed, I decided that for laundry purposes, the mattress needed some more easily removable covers. The duvet cover I had cut down for her bedding found itself being converted into fitted sheets. Being a softie, and worried that the foam might not smell very reassuring, I worked with it as it was – somewhat dog-scented and generously adorned with hair. A couple of hours, a yard of knicker elastic and a bit of ingenuity later, Poppy had a comfortable, slightly familiar-smelling mattress. I had a shower and a change of clothes.

New mattress, favourite cushion and duvet. No wonder she’s comfortable!

Now she rarely uses the bedding by the side of our bed. If Geoff calls her in at night, she humours him briefly, and then tiptoes out to where she now prefers to be.