Certain details have been changed to protect anonymity

We have briefly mentioned previously about dogs in the bedroom and it reminded me of a problem that I was asked to solve, it went something like this….
Mr Brown telephoned me regarding his dog but it all sounded very mysterious as we had to meet in a car park, Mrs Brown must never know and therefore I could never visit his house. I arrived at the appointed hour and was surprised to find that Mr Brown was without a dog. I joined him in his Mercedes and he proceeded to tell me his tale of woe.
And what a tale it was!!!
Like many married couples Mr and Mrs shared a double bed but unfortunately for Mr Brown there was a third occupant, their West Highland White Terrier called Snowy. Now this little dog was the apple of his mistresses eye, he slept on her side and all would have been well if it has stayed that way but as Mr Brown pointed out with some embarrassment that he was obliged to get up in the night for a visit to the loo. This is where the problem was because Snowy didn’t want to let Mr Brown back into the bed. He bared his teeth, growled and poor Mr Brown departed to the spare room. I gathered that this issue and others regarding Snowy had caused friction in the Brown household before and it was very obvious who wore the trousers in this relationship. Mrs Brown would have nothing said against her little darling and without a doubt she was a formidable woman, hence all the subterfuge.
I must admit I was tempted to walk away from this one, getting involved in other people’s domestic problems isn’t my thing but I was intrigued by the challenge
I informed Mr Brown that I would give his problem my prompt attention and asked him to ring me in a couple of days.
The problem was how to remove Snowy from the Mr Browns side of the bed without waking Mrs Brown and therefore retaining some degree of harmony in the Brown household.
After a few hours of deliberation I decided there was only one way to do this.
At the time silent whistles were all the rage. Now personally I wasn’t a great fan of these things, if you are going to use a whistle then use a proper one.
So the scenario was to be this, Mr Brown would use the bathroom as normal and when Snowy growled Mr Brown would blow the whistle and hopefully Snowy would be so shocked he would let Mr Brown into the bed.
It was a bit of a shot in the dark (unintended pun! ) but it was all I could think of at the time.
I supplied Mr Brown with the whistle and waited with some trepidation.
The phone call came about a week later.
 It seems that Mr Brown is now king of his castle, Snowy now shows Mr Brown respect in and out of the bedroom. Mrs Brown is puzzled at the turn of events and can’t understand why Snowy is so well behaved with Mr Brown.
I collected my fee and filed my sheet which I raise for every client and quickly forgot the rather strange episode.
At Christmas that year I received a card, inside was a photo of Mr and Mrs Brown with Snowy sitting between them. They all looked very happy, a typical family photo. The card was unsigned and only had two words “Thank you”

R

From the animal Kingdom we have taken so much and given so little, our debt is incalculable.

R P H