A Dog's Life

It is a fact generally acknowledged, dear reader, that a man is not a man without a dog . . . ‘I have always been a pushover when it comes to dogs – something my own dogs worked out a long time ago. Who else can be relied on to be that excited about seeing you first thing, day in day out?’ Mary, Tina and Arthur are the four-footed members of the Clunes family – scrapping, sleeping, leaping, wagging and licking. But there’s too much of the scrapping, and the hierarchy is a complicated structure that has been bent and broken. Martin Clunes set off on a worldwide adventure to film ITV’s A Man and His Dogs and sought to discover where dogs come from and how they evolved into our companions and the working dogs of today. Along the way he also learned about the social structure of a wolf pack, survival skills of dingoes in Australia and wild dogs in Africa, among other things. In the wild, social rules are obeyed or fur flies, but nature has been pretty vicious in Martin’s own back yard as well. The battle to stop the fighting between Tina and Mary has included ventures into therapy, training classes, dog psychiatry, diet and tough love. Through the adventures of this delightful, closely-knit family, with their horses and chickens and dogs, we learn about the soft-hearted actor who is Martin Clunes. Fond, funny and endearing, this book will enchant and fascinate in equal measure.