A Woman's Best Friend by Sheena Wilkinson

‘Do you have any pets?’ I would often be asked on primary school author visits. I hated having to answer, ‘No, not any more,’ and it never felt like the truth even though, after 2014, when my last cat died, it was. I couldn’t bear to think that Peter – latest in a line of animals I’d had since the age of ten, from guinea-pigs and gerbils to horses – would be my last animal ever, but the life of a freelance writer living alone was not compatible with giving an animal the life it deserved.

One of my childhood favourite books was A Dog So Small by Philippa Pearce, about Ben, who longs for a dog so much that he magics up a tiny imaginary one just as I, a kid in a Belfast housing estate, had had imaginary ponies. 

As an adult I wished I could turn my very many model dogs -- mostly ceramic greyhounds -- into real ones for the fifty or so percent of my life that was eminently dog-friendly – the days at home where I spent long hours at my desk (the dogs would lie beneath it, snoring gently) punctuated by forest walks (which the dogs would relish). And when I had to fly to Edinburgh or London, or leave the house at seven in the morning for a day of school visits I could turn them back into inanimate figures. That way, no dog would be left alone; no dog would have to go to kennels; no dog would be – harrowing thought – sad. I could stay late at a book launch or accept an invitation on a whim without having to rush home. Model dogs don’t need fed, don’t get lonely and won’t poo on the carpet. Given my extreme avoidance of anything resembling fantasy or magic, this flight of fancy showed how deep the longing was. 

When I married last year I became a dog owner at last! Hooray! Daisy is a cross between a Springer Spaniel and a Jack Russell, which means she is very lively, enthusiastic and loves getting mucky. She’s very much my kind of dog – a roughie-toughie sporty little thing, straight out of a pony book. But surely, I reasoned, she would be happier with a pal?

Daisy

And that’s how ex-racing greyhound Stroller joined our household. The day I met him, my longing for this beautiful, gentle creature loping kindly beside me, prepared to trust a stranger, squeezed my heart. I knew that I would be devastated if he couldn’t be mine to love and look after for the rest of his life. That I would feel as unfulfilled as  if I'd never had a book published, or the way some women might if they didn't have children.  Typing this now, I’m tempted to say, as I so often do, Oh for goodness sake, Sheena, you’re such a drama queen! Unfulfilled indeed! But it was one of the strongest feelings I have ever had, and I’m not going to apologise for it or dismiss it. 

Stroller 

Anyway, he did come home with us, and he and Daisy are good pals and he is the sweetest dog I have ever known, and worth waiting 53 years for. So I’m going to celebrate being a proper dog owner at last by sharing some of my favourite fictional dogs. I hope you like them – and feel free to add your own! I'm sorry that only one of these dogs is female but here, as in so many things, women are underrepresented. 

Black Bob, the 'Dandy' Wonder Dog started off my love for border collies when I inherited these 1950s annuals from my dad. Sheepdog Bob, faithful companion to his shepherd owner, Andrew Glenn, is the perfect dog -- rescuer of sheep, companion to the afflicted and nemesis of all baddies. 

Argos in The Odyssey (Homer)

When Odysseus comes home after twenty years the only creature to recognise him is his ancient hound Argos. Grown old and 'abandoned, half-destroyed with fleas' old Argos 'did his best to wag his tail' -- and if any dog lover can read about this, and Argos's subsequent death without crying, I will be shocked. 

And then there is the death of faithful old Jack in The Little House in the Prairie series (Laura Ingalls Wilder). Jack the brindle bulldog crosses the land for hundreds of miles behind the Ingallses' wagon, at one time being swept downstream in the Mississippi River, and eventually dies of old age in By the Shores of Silver Lake. Laura reflects that she will never again feel him nudging her to pet him, and, so heartbreakingly that I can't bear to check the book to see if I have got the words exactly right, that 'there were so many times she could have petted him without being asked and now it was too late.' This is the first thing I remember crying at in a book, and it still gets me Every Single Time. Including this one. 

So to cheer us all up it's time for Timmy, one of Enid Blyton's Famous Five. Timmy undergoes some trials too, mostly at the hands of shifty baddies, but Enid Blyton would never let anything too bad happen, and Timmy always prevail, often to close off an adventure with some witticism of his own: 'Woof,' said Timmy. 'I quite agree.'  I was charmed by the fact that Timmy was actually one of the Five, rightly so, for he is preternaturally wise, faithful and brave, though endearingly naughty at times and resourceful enough to catch rabbits for food -- but only when he is really hungry. Generations of children have grown up with Timmy as their ideal -- hard luck on the poor old real dogs who don't quite measure up. 

One fictional dog who certainly does measure up -- usually to about twice the weight he is meant to be, is the spoilt but endearing Tricki Woo in James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small books. The story where James takes the literally-almost-spoilt-to-death Pekinese to stay with his own dogs, where he loses weight and learns to be -- albeit briefly -- a real dog, catching rats in the barn, is one of my favourite sequences in the whole series. 

And finally, the narrator of the wonderfully original Fire, Bed and Bone by Henrietta Branford, a thirteenth-century bitch who tells her own epic story of hardship, hunting and survival -- punctuated with the odd bit of mating (and subsequent whelping) set against the background of the Peasants' Revolt. She is stoical, brave and preternaturally clever, a sort of medieval Timmy. 

Of course, dear reader, I know that, to you, your dog is the best in the world, and that's exactly as it should be. 

(But these are really the best!)