It’s the secret of a successful marriage: my wife treats me like a dog

‘Here, Wolf,’ says the Fawn to me, showing me a saucer. ‘Look at this! This is the new place where you put your mouth things. See! See the saucer? Look at the saucer! See the saucer! This saucer will now live by your bed. This is the place where from now on you put your mouth things. Not on the floor. In the saucer. See Wolf? See?’

(My ‘mouth things’, I should explain, are the manky strips of surgical tape I use to seal up my mouth every night. This sounds weird, I know, but it does have a purpose. I practise this breathing method called buteyko).

And that dialogue I gave you in the first par — that’s my wife (aka the Fawn) in the process of training me. She has worked out — correctly — that men are really very basic animals, not much different from dogs. So, just as we’ve learned to train Daisy our wayward Cocker spaniel pup using clear, repeated commands reinforced with rewards, we’re now seeing if the same techniques will work on me.