My furry best friend.

No, I don't mean Matt.

I refer you to Zebbie, the family dog. He lives with my auntie and I've grown up with him, we are the same age.

I'm going to give you as many reasons as I can think of why this dog is the best dog in the world.

He's warm.

My brother - Paul - refers to Zebbie as a 'living hot water bottle' because he will (usually unwillingly) get in bed with you and keep you warm whilst growling because you've trapped him there. It's oddly soothing.

He's cranky.

He's fifteen now, so he's old in dog years. His back legs don't work so well, he's half deaf and half blind. He's a grumpy old man with a bad temper, and will growl at anything. This is kind of endearing as he never growls at me. He knows me.

He's childish.

He's juvenile and despite being a miserable old bugger he loves running around playing fetch, and then when he catches whatever you throw him, he utterly decimates it. He has us all on edge with his antics. It's similar to when my eighty-year-old great-uncle Ernest was racing up and down a field on a moped at seventy miles per hour at my uncle's wedding and we were all shrieking at him to slow down and take it easy.

He's a snob.

He acts like he owns EVERYTHING. He has breakfast cooked for him every morning, we all feel morally obliged to feed him under the table at family functions, he buries everyone's underwear, he poos wherever he sees fit and he'll shove past you if you aren't going somewhere fast enough.

Oh, and he'll drag you around for miles if you take him for a walk and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.

He's romantic.

He's not a shameless doggy lothario. He's a proper gentlemanly dog.

He's a toddler.

He still has a blanket which he sleeps with every night and woe betide anyone who dares to steal it.

He's a softy.

Especially with me. When my parents went to America and I was sleeping on my grandma's sofa, I was very upset and Zebbie picked up on that. He slept beside me on the sofa (very squished...) and kept me company all night long. He then had a hissy fit when my grandma hit me with a walking stick to wake me up the next morning.

(The flipside to this is that he actually held me hostage on the sofa. Everytime I moved he growled and then if I stopped stroking his head he nudged me awake.)

He's crap with children.

He hates it when Kelsi or Eboni swarm around him. He's become such a grumpy bastard. When we were young he was very protective over me. He'd sit with me in my grandma's garden and keep watch whilst I played, and he'd whine if I cried. He also let me sit on his back sometimes.

We're a couple of losers.

We've been known to sit in the drive at my grandma's house and complain about the world. Well, I do the complaining, he just barks at things.

He's a sheepdog.

I've never seen him around sheep but when we used to go for walks in the fields near my grandma's place, he used to run around in the hay and go ape-shit crazy.

And finally, he makes an awesome fairy.

When he was a puppy (ish...) I dressed him up in my fairy costume. He looked awesome. I have it on video somewhere...

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So three cheers for the Zeb-meister, for he is the most fantastical old bastard I've ever come across for sure.

Nicole.