24/10/2025
Gosh - how did I miss Throwback Thursday?
Should that be 'Froback Friday?
One question I often ask clients relates to their early experiences of dogs. Our formative experiences can be so instrumental in shaping how we think about animals - even if we're taking a proactive stance NOT to do as our families did.
I think this photo says a lot about my family, for sure.
This is my great nan on my paternal grandmother's side, at her son-in-law and daughter's house. It tells such a story.
For those of you who knew my blonde bombshell of a dog Tilly, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is Tilly sitting next to my nan.
Wrong decade, for sure, since this is the late 1980s.
Wrong dog, too. This is my grandparents' dog Sunny.
Sunny taught me everything I needed to know about Tilly.
Did you have specific 'adult' and 'child' chairs in your family? Chairs for the patriarch & chairs for the matriarch? This is actually my Nana's chair that my nan has usurped - kicking her daughter out to read the Sunday Express (note the impeccable nail varnish please)
Nobody ever usurped my Gramps - her son-in-law. Only his grandchildren were allowed that occasional permission.
Sunny, though, was often to be found next to my Nana on this seat. He's also clearly impervious to my Nan's look. I still feel that look across the decades - knowing that I certainly would not have dared stay put were I sitting in that chair. I'm sure Sunny is feeling that pointed look with his yawn - though it could well be the camera pointed at him.
Even so, my Nan is perched on the chair as if she's the inconvenience, much as she might feel disgruntled about it.
Despite clear social boundaries and hierarchies about who got to sit where and under what condition, my grandparents' dogs had special privileges most of the time. We adapted around the dog. Even my nan.
Well, most of the time.
Sunny is the dog who taught me to always push the chair in at the dining room table. That dog would be up on that table helping himself before you could blink.
He once snatched a sandwich from my hand just before it went into my mouth, timing it perfectly.
If ever a vacuum cleaner were needed, he was on hand.
He also taught me how hard dogs find greetings. Sunny's 'pickles' were well-known and Sunny went into the back garden for a p*e before he came into see us.
He's also the one who taught me about the dangers of leaving a handbag open around a spaniel. My nan had more than one bag of mint imperials stolen.
Sunny was also the dog who taught me that some dogs like tissues. A lot. Especially retrievers and spaniels. I always wonder if it's their feather-like quality. Nobody surprises me if they say their golden retriever guards fallen tissues. Sunny was a dab hand at destroying boxes of tissues.
He was also the one who taught me about preference tests. On his occasional forays up on the buffet table, he was delicate enough to pick off the things he liked and leave the rest. He ate all the prawns from a salad and would happily leave the avocado. He'd eat the meringue off a pie and leave the lemon curd. He'd eat a pound of best butter and suffer the consequences the next day. If you haven't seen what comes out of a spaniel the day after eating a pound of butter, I can assure you it is exactly what you'd expect.
And yes, he was particularly sensitive to those times my Gramps was opening a packet in the kitchen and trying to sneak a jaffa cake without informing the rest of us.
Sunny is one of the dogs who created my foundations with dogs. In fact, he was rehomed from one of my Nan's sons, where he's struggled to adapt. Different homes make for different dogs.
He also taught me that you don't need ever to be the boss. If you are in any doubt who was the boss of our family, know that we lived in fear of a withering glance from my nan. Raising ten children on a shoestring budget, she apparently kept a snooker cue to hand to keep order at the table. I never saw such things: the younger generation lived in states of inherited fear, passed on through legend and myth.
And yet here's Sunny, on the chair, wedged in as if he knew no terror.
He also taught me that stern authority and forced attempts to make dogs submit make for a nervous spaniel. When Tilly arrived with me, aged five, a sad history behind her, what Sunny taught me helped her find safety. They bridged generations, behaviours cut from the same cloth.
And they taught me that conflicted dogs can often be the product of conflicting environments. I don't ever remember any of our spaniels guarding things, being grumpy or snappy. The harder you try to impose your will on a spaniel, the more opinions they have about that.
Those mundane moments growing up, after dinner has been eaten, after the tables have been cleared, after the pots have been washed and put away and you've sat down in your best slippers to relax ... those everyday moments tell us so much about the ways our relationships with animals were formed.
What we take forward from those times or what we leave behind lingers on in our dogs' lives today. What did you consciously bring with you from your childhood dogs, and what did you leave behind?
