I never thought that falling in love with my children would also mean falling in love with a dog. Dogs were, if anything, even weirder to me than babies. One of the first thing Health visitors warn you against when pregnant are pets; and being allergic to the cats I grew up with predisposed me to avoid animals anyway. But, “Men love women, women love children and children love hamsters,” as Alice Thomas Ellis once observed; in the case of my children, it’s not just hamsters but every animal from the Jurassic period onwards. At the top of their wish-list was a dog. “Dog” was my daughter’s first word, and from then on it never stopped. A relentless campaign was underway, in which stuffed toys, other people’s pets, goldfish and even a gerbil was no substitution.

Once my son was out of nappies, there was no resistance left. Our life was no longer our own, anyway, so why not get a dog? Nervously, after consulting various dog-loving friends and the Collins Gem Book of Dogs, we hit upon the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel as small (very important, because this dictates the size of what you will scoop) beautiful, charming and gentle. “A London-sized dog with a big dog’s heart,” one friend put it. After guiltily rejecting the Battersea Dogs’ Home option (with children, you want to know what you’re getting) we found a breeder through the Kennel Club.

He was and is, without doubt, the best Christmas present we could ever have given our children. However much you may dislike the sentiment surrounding this annual event, the expression on a child’s face on discovering a puppy is one of the most extraordinary experiences of parenthood. Amazement, joy, wonder and tenderness don’t begin to describe it: each face was three round O’s of silent bliss. Like new parents themselves, they took it in turns to carry the warm, furry puppy around in their arms or hold him in their laps, hardly daring to breathe. But they are children, not adults. Making them understand they should not dress him up, put him in the dolls-house or smack him for making small puddles was one thing. Accepting him as a member of the family, with his own rights and dignity, was another.

My son and, to a lesser degree, my daughter, became furiously jealous of the passion he inspired in me. Within days, my three-year-old son would express his feelings with bursts of violence, lashing out and behaving exactly as if a new baby had come into the house. I was always there to protect Lucky, who was actually more endangered by my daughter’s desire to carry him around, but it was a horrible time. On various occasions I had to crouch over our poor terrified pup as blows rained down on my back. As a mother, your instinct is always to protect the smallest and weakest, and my ferocity in doing this became a battle of wills. Often, families give up on having a dog because of this jealousy. We were all too besotted with him to contemplate this, but in any case it would, I think, have set them a terrible example had I caved in.

It wasn’t until my son was able to express his anxiety that I loved the dog more than I loved him, that his attacks came to a stop. Just as with sibling jealousy, being able to make a child feel more important for being the protector, not the tormentor, of another living thing is the turning-point. Now my son is, of all of us, Lucky’s chosen playmate. They play tag together, chase each other round the park and enjoy long sessions watching videos together. For the youngest child, to have something even smaller and more powerless in the house is a challenge to their moral nature. Without a dog it may have taken my son much longer to learn a degree of compassion, self-control and gentleness.

It’s much easier to learn discipline yourself if you’re trying to teach it to someone else. Just as parents tend to become better people by conveying kindness, honesty and fairness to children, so my children seem to have learnt these qualities, at least in part, from looking after the dog. All of them can be equally naughty, disobedient and mischievous but although I have to admit my dog is better-trained than my children, the latter have learnt a lot of common-sense through looking after him. They no longer dash out across the road, because this could get Lucky run over. They understand why his poo must be picked up, why it’s important to eat well but not too well. Seeing Lucky’s siblings wheezing and waddling in the park like fat old men, when our own dog is as slim and active as a puppy is a living object-lesson about what bad diet and no exercise bring about. Every day, come rain or shine, we have to walk him for at least half an hour, and this responsibility (even when resented) is understood as part of the contract between human and dog. Of course, there are also dogs who don’t have this contract understood, who are fat, bored, unloved, and whose owners don’t ensure they aren’t a public nuisance. Our dog is lucky in being none of the above. He has taught us about time, because his life will be so much shorter than ours, and about loving something much less intelligent but no less rewarding than your own species. Above all, he has made my children ask searching questions about what they, in turn, will owe their own children.

How can anyone bear to cut themselves off from this experience? Well, as with kids, some people just don’t like dogs. I used to be one of them, so I understand where they’re coming from. Also, the expense is substantial: vets, pet insurance and good dried food don’t leave you change from £300 a year. Most worrying, once you’re committed, is travel. The horror of leaving a family dog behind when on holiday is almost like being without one of your children: the heartache every day you spend time away is exacerbated by not being able to explain your absence. If you hate the idea of kennels you have to make, and pay for, other arrangements. Health and safety regulations mean that family outings to any number of places, from museums to cafes, are curtailed. Ditto going to stay with people who have their own dog – or who hate them. You can’t force your pet on them, however charming, clean and well-behaved you believe it to be.

Set against this is all that a dog can bring to enrich your life. Without Lucky, I would probably have gone on having children even when it wasn’t safe to do so. I don’t, as some do, confuse the two but there is no doubt that a dog, particularly a small one, satisfies the vestigial urge to have another baby. Ours completes the family. Elizabeth Von Arnim, JR Ackerley, Dodie Smith, and more recently Trevor Grove and Paul Bailey have all written wonderful books about their own canine companions, yet the family dog remains unheralded. I wish it were not so. Children are wiser than we know in wanting to be close to animals, and if having children finds a proper place for the childish in the adult, as Martin Amis observed, so having a dog finds a proper place for the animal in us, too. The Christmas story includes animals, and it is their patience, gentleness, and silent companionship that form one of the deepest kinds of love a family can know.

The Guardian November 2003
Amanda Craig’s new novel, Love in Idleness, is published by Little, Brown £12.99.