New Year, New Start Kate & Mike's Big Wake-Up Call

The pair are taking over the airwaves together

The year has only just begun and already there have been big changes for our Woman’s Day columnist Kate Hawkesby and her husband Mike Hosking. For a start, they’ve both fallen madly in love. In fact, their whole household is besotted with the new addition to the family – a tiny Maltese puppy called Lulu.

The adorable fluffball was a surprise gift for daughter Marley’s 11th birthday, but Kate admits her arrival was also quite a surprise to Mike, who had been firm about not getting another dog.

“Marley has wanted a puppy forever, but Mike was very against it,” tells Kate. “So I just quietly, without telling him, put us on a waiting list with a view that it would probably never happen because it’s hard to get a purebred Maltese.

Meant to be

“Then the breeder rang and said there was a puppy for us within days of Marley’s birthday and I thought it was so serendipitous. At that point, I had to tell Mike. He took it much better than I thought.”

“Because it’s not the first example of skullduggerous behaviour,” Mike points out with a resigned air.

Kate employed pretty much the same technique when the family adopted their last dog, golden Labrador Indie. And of course, the moment Lulu arrived on the scene, there was no resisting her charms.

“She’s stolen everybody’s hearts,” says Kate. “I keep finding her sitting on Mike’s lap, licking his chin. She loves him to death.”

In a way, this wasn’t the ideal time to be adding to the household. After stepping away from her broadcasting career for several years so she could devote herself to their blended family of five children, 44-year-old Kate has taken on a new job.