I have a dog. He’s quite a large dog and maybe just a little crazy in that he always seems to be hyper happy. He’s trained, though still gets deliriously excited when I come home, or if we have visitors. On one level I like his exuberance, though it can get tiresome.

My youngest sister has 4 small dogs. Between them they weigh about half what my dog weighs, but I genuinely don’t know how she can stand to have 4 dogs around the place even though they’re well trained. She used to have a lizard too, though I’m not sure if she hides that upstairs or if it’s gone now; I don’t ask! My other sister has 2 dogs that aren’t trained at all and they’re a total pain. They’re dirty, don’t do as they’re told, and mess wherever they feel like. Disgusting! My Mother also has 2 untrained dogs, and goodness only knows how many other creatures in her house that my niece has allegedly rescued. The house smells really bad, and I rarely visit these days due to the menagerie. I think my brother has just the one dog, and knowing him, it's properly trained.

Growing up we always had a dog, even when we lived in Germany; we were ‘army brats.’ My Mother hates cats, my one sister is very allergic to them, and I get a very bad reaction to any cat flea bites, so no cats in our family.

My Father liked dogs, but he also liked his parakeet (which escaped one day and flew away to be free). He liked snakes too, and when we lived in Malaya he had two baby pythons. I dislike snakes intensely, especially after one tried to kill me when I was very small; I was ‘wrapped’ by a rather large anaconda. To this day I don’t like to be held tightly :(

When we moved to Germany my Father thought it would be ‘fun’ to have a pet scorpion, goodness knows where he bought it from. As kids, we’d always give it a very wide berth. One day it escaped and made its way in to the cellar which is where we used to play on wet days. Now and again we had to go down to the cellar to get our bikes out, or my Mother had to go down and sort out the boiler that was old and cranky. Nobody went down there unless they wore a coat and hood in case it dropped off the ceiling, and wellingtons in case we stood on it. One day, when my Father was out, my Mother called in a sniper (I assume) and he shot it nice and cleanly. It was such a clean shot that it was mostly intact and my father made it a plastic case which he then kept on the parcel shelf of the car. Long journeys were often spent keeping a watchful eye on that thing just in case it wasn’t really dead. What fun we had as kid’s…