we have a cross fox terrier and he has conditioned me to wake up at certain times of night to take him for a walk to answer the call of nature. I'd rather have a full night's sleep, but if that's what it takes to kave this excellent mobile burglar alarm around, then I'm willing to pay that price.

He can also read us like a book and prefers eating when we all eat, rather than eating alone. And he doesn't like to be kept waiting.

We have a three year old labrador who I call the 'wallet-flattener' but she is a member of our family. She looks me in the face to gauge whether its car time, walking time or beach time.

I can't work out if it's my own anthropomorphism or whether dogs really are trying to communicate with us. If they are trying to communicate, I'd say they'd want us to get rid of Clover Moore and the Greens in the Senate and return us to a more rustic Queensland National Party setting of the 'good ole days'.

Unless of course your pooch lives in inner urban Melbourne or Sydney and it wears a gay pride coat of many colours and is called 'Gavin'.

The more we learn about how animals really think, the less comfortable we will be about driving them from their homes, cutting off their food supplies, exploiting them for money and killing them inhumanely.