Who's The Daddy: Walter is living anything but a dog’s life

Our eight-year-old sighthound Walter has lived the absolute life of Riley since his “Gotcha” day back in October 2015. At his annual health check, jabs and kennel cough live vaccine up his hooter last week (£93.10), the vet remarked he was in perfect nick and looked years younger than his age - apart from his teeth.

Sighthounds are prone to bad teeth (otherwise known as “teefs” by overindulgent landshark owners) and the vet asked if I would like a quote for a professional scale and polish. Why of course, the sun shines out of that dog’s behind. He must have the very best of the very best. It ranged from £300-plus to £700-plus, for the worst case scenario of two extractions at the back with roots as deep as a 17th century oak.

Oh, and his health insurance (£73.73 a month) doesn’t cover routine dental work. And it’s payment in full on collection. Obviously he’d have a general anaesthetic, nobody wants to be at the business end of an erratic sighthound when you’re fiddling with his massive pointy teeth. Sorry, teefs.

So I did what any self-respecting middle-aged man who has been described as frugal, astute and even tight when it comes to personal finance would do, said “yes please” and “thank you very much” and booked him in for the Monday before Christmas.

The boss thinks I spoil him. Big long walk every day, sometimes twice, a trip out with a professional dog walker and a pack of big dogs who keep him in check once a week, food that Harrods would sell you, unfettered access to two sofas and three beds to lounge on and a boxful of toys, including an EFL football that’s had all the casing chewed off because that’s how lunatic sighthounds roll, apparently.

But I do feel bad that even though I’ve worked from home for almost four years, during the day I’m busy tappity-tappity-tap-tapping away at the old journalism so we can’t play fetch with his Panda Bear and Disco Ball whenever he feels like it. The boss says I’m a ****ing idiot and wishes I’d been “as attentive with our kids’ medical appointments as I am with the bloody dog’s”, which I thought was a bit testy.

His most recent party piece, after waking me before dawn to let him out for a wee, is to whinny at our bedroom door again 10 minutes later, then thunder downstairs to be - get this - tucked in under his freshly laundered blankets, while dressed in his onesie, on one of his sofas so he can go back to sleep til around 9.30.

Reading this back, I think the boy Walter might be taking the Mick and is playing his old dad and the “spare hooman” I’ve been married to for 25 years like a fiddle.

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