I suppose every family has its own Christmas traditions and ours is no exception but our traditions have changed and evolved over the years. My Mum introduced table presents years ago - these were all small enough to be wrapped and piled in the centre of the table at Christmas dinner. Each had a lengthy ribbon attached at the end of which would be a name card. These would act as place settings and at the end of the meal when the nuts and port came out everybody would pull their own ribbon to retrieve their present. It was a lovely idea and I continued it for some years but it was a bit fiddly and difficult to find suitably small parcels so I introduced my own variation - a lucky dip with lots of parcels, each one numbered and placed in a box. After the Christmas pud everybody picks out numbers from a hat in turn and claim their prizes. The prizes are all frivolous ones designed to entertain the assembled company - such as oddball books (collections of jokes, myths, strange facts etc), small musical instruments, magic tricks and games. This year one of the prizes which caused great hilarity was the "Beware of the Dog" game. It was one of the two STAR prizes and to my embarrassment I won it but donated it to my daughter as her brother had acquired the other - a stylophone.

The dog is of indeterminate breed but is certainly no poodle; maybe the closest match would be a bull dog but I don't think bulldogs come in this deep chocolate brown shade. Whatever it is, it's a clever design because when it's sitting asleep it looks as if it is smiling but when it attacks, rearing up on its back legs and showing all its awesome knashers it becomes chillingly fierce! It's a sturdy looking creature and stands some eight inches tall at its most gruesome. It is designed to sit "cuddling" a yellow stand and its two front paws slot into plastic posts at each side of the stand. This platform holds all the 'workings' including the three AA batteries required and a speaker. At the front, adjacent to the dog's nose when it's in sleeping mode, is its bowl. It's all very simple to assemble but a cross head screw driver is needed to open the battery department.

What really makes the game for me is that when switched on the dog snores! Sometimes if the player is a little clumsy he stops snoring making everybody think he will pounce but often he will just resume snorting contentedly. Eventually some clumsy soul will wake him and he will instantly spring up to his full height with a formidable growl. Everybody knows it's coming but everybody jumps nevertheless. The guilty player is then out of the game and the winner is the one who lasts longest! But even when you are out it's fun watching the tentative attempts of those remaining even trying to distract them if you are really playing dirty!

On the down side, I think that ,although the whole thing is quite sturdy, it would not take a lot of rough treatment especially the spring mechanism. Also it may be a bit costly in terms of batteries but I can't assess this accurately at present. I have replaced them once but the original ones weren't new. The instructions do confirm that rechargeables can be used so that would be more economical. I would thoroughly recommend it nevertheless.