COLUMN: Sophia is a bitch and she enriches our lives by being great company

Sophia - the Shih Tzu we brought home from South Korea after we finished teaching out there - is a walking bitch...as in she’s a female dog.

The glamorous canine (pictured right) is a huge part of our family and is loved by everyone.

She is ten in dog years now but years ago she had many outfits, like Kim Kardashian sweatpants which were purchased in Japan; her flowery dress; a woolly hoodie and I think there’s a pirate outfit in the cupboard somewhere.

But as she got older, she stopped wearing all these fancy clothes and she stopped being a glamour dog. Now, she spends each day trying to survive Jack (our son) and his best efforts at attempting to, we think, kill her.

As pets go, Sophia really takes the biscuit. But don’t all dog owners say things like that?

This Shih Tzu though; she gets groomed every month and it costs around €60. She sleeps in the bed with us, under the covers, between either my legs or my wife’s legs. If she’s not there, she’s on a pillow, taking over the pillow, and we’ll foolishly sleep on a little corner of it.

Sophia tries to inflict psychological trauma on us too across a range of circumstances. She has a way of making herself really small and vulnerable - especially if she knows we’re leaving.

I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve left the bedroom to go wash my teeth and she’s feigning sleep under the duvet, just this little lump.

I’m ready for work and she knows by the commotion that I’ll be leaving soon. Anyway, she’s just a mound in the bed, I go to the bathroom, I’m brushing my teeth and I look in the mirror and I can see her in the hall behind me, looking straight at me. She’s like a ninja wandering around the house and carpet only improves her stealthiness.

My wife is convinced that when she lies across our necks she’s not cosying up to us; but is instead trying to kill us or figure out how to.

She’s got an insatiable appetite too. She will literally eat anything and she usually gets a small plate of what we’re having and lately, she is finishing what Jack doesn’t eat. Although she’s now starting to refuse to eat that, I think she has an issue eating his slops.

She’s too precious for slops. She understands certain words too, they include: Boherlahan (the village where I’m from and where she gets loads of chicken from my father), walkie and of course, chicken. These words cause an obligatory head tilt and an inquisitive look or lick, depending on where she is.

She spends most of her day trying to manipulate us to feed her or play with her, but there’s nothing we can do, we’re hooked.

We love her. On one occasion we left her with my parents for two days. When we came back she had a limp and I said to my father: “What happened the dog?” and he replied: “Nothing, she was fine two minutes ago.”

She put on the limp to make us feel bad for leaving her.

Within five minutes she’d forgotten she was supposed to be limping. Another time we left an opened bag of Hunky Dorys folded up one night on the table, it was a low table. We went to bed, as did Sophia.

Everything was normal.

The next morning, we got up and there wasn’t a grain of salt left in the packet. Despite all these things, we adore her and she is great company for us and Jack.