Poppy was born at Spicemill on 29 January 2007 from Venka and Jambo Spices litter. This black & gold girl was at first nicknamed "pink" as it was the colour of her identification ribbon but we quickly though of renaming her little monster! ;) This litter was overall active and confident but Poppy was simply unstopable. She quickly worked out how to climb out of the pen and then, there was no stopping her. She was always outwitting us and no barricade was good enough. When other puppies would give up, Poppy would try again, and again, and again.

It was very quickly obvious that Poppy would be an absolute nightmare for an inexperienced family but a fantastic girl for someone who wanted a working dog. James considered keeping her at Spicemill to train her as a search dog as she had such an excellent drive. But the timing was bad for us with our baby son on the way. Luckily for us, we had the perfect home waiting for her, which helped us to finally let her go.

Poppy lives in Kent with Jo and her family. Jo has a long experience of dogs and is enjoying her very much. Poppy is her first hovie though and she is discovering that hovawarts are excellent and fast learners, but that they do not work in the same way that the German shepherds she is used to. As Jo says herself: Poppy has to be in the mood! But the bug has now bitten her and another hovawart may well be joining Poppy and the rest of the canine gang in a not too distant future.

Jo and Poppy keep making us proud by passing all the levels of the Kennel Club Good Citizen Scheme one after the other. Puppy foundation and bronze may be quite common, but young Poppy also has her silver and got her gold at only 15 months old. What an achievement!

Can I help with the gardening?	Poppy with a typical innocent hovawart puppy look