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The late Doris Day once said she could never live without a dog.

Same, as young people say. I have had six dogs in my life and I’ve loved them all. Each was wonderful in his/her own way, their canine idiosyncrasies a constant source of joy and amusement.

The dog of my early childhood years was Nimrod, a Manchester terrier with one green eye and one blue, who fell asleep if anyone sang Golden Slumbers. He had a bandit nature and would never allow anyone to put him on a lead (he took himself off for long walks instead). When he once failed to return from one of his forays, my father made an appeal in his Daily Express column. Battersea Dogs Home got in touch to say a dog matching his description had been found wandering the streets of Nottingham. (How he got to the East Midlands from Middlesex is one of the great family mysteries.) When my mother went to Battersea to retrieve him, he honked with unbridled joy.

Nimrod was succeeded in 1972 by our beautiful Shetland sheepdog, Aaron. He was taller than the average Sheltie and looked like Lassie. My sister taught him to growl if anyone said ‘Bernard Levin’ (our dad’s nemesis). After Aaron’s death, the Aged P stuffed a homemade cushion with all the fur she’d saved from his coat over the years and presented it to me for my 19th birthday. The cushion was unusually heavy, prompting my brother Johnny to wonder if she had put the whole dog in there.

In the eighties, the Aged P owned a crazy but lovable Staffordshire bull terrier called Pam. She once bit a man who tried to stroke her in the local pub. ‘Cor, smashing dog,’ he insisted, blood pouring down his arm. Pam’s diet made Elvis’s look healthy. She dined daily on liver with onions and gravy, lovingly fried by the Aged P. Her theory was that dogs live only short lives – so why shouldn’t they be given food they really enjoy? After her first offal feast, Pam would never be fobbed off with canned dog food again.