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“Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.” George Eliot

When I was little, I had a sticker on my bedframe that said, “Have you hugged your dog today?” Little did I know that at 10 years old, I was already learning how to cultivate well-being practices. Scrolling the first 10 pages of Google Scholar reveals 100’s of research papers published on well-being referencing the relationship of people to pets. I would not be surprised if there were 1000’s, but that’s only a guess. I don’t need to read all that research to know how much joy and happiness I have had over the years growing up with guinea pigs, mice, birds, cats, and dogs.

From the age of 8, our family dog was a stray labrador cross that my sister and I creatively called, Blackie as his fur was – you guessed it – black! Dad bought Mum a retired, singing yellow canary she named Oliver. After a couple more years, a stray cat came into our lives. We thought he was a Russian Blue, so we named him Khruschev (Dad chose the name this time). A year later, we found out he was an English Domestic Grey, but, by then, it was too late to rename him Churchill. Sadly, after 10 years of temptation, Khruschev ate Oliver, so we literally had a “cat who ate the canary”! It was very upsetting for us all, but especially Mum as you may well imagine.