Mel Miskimen reads excerpts from her memoir: Sit Stay Heal

My parents had known each other since they were 12 and when my mother unexpectedly died, my father was lost. He needed a project.

Enter my 7 year old underachieving labrador, Seamus.

Dad was a hunter. An expert when it came to training retrievers to fetch felled fowl. My dog, however was good at getting the newspaper, balancing a biscuit on his nose and keeping me warm on the sofa. Could my father help me train Seamus to be a ‘real’ dog? Over the year after my mother died, he and I (and dog) took to the muddy fields every Wednesday morning. I learned the finer points of being in command, something I wasn’t really keen on, and underneath my father’s gruff and rough outer layer, was a soft and chewy center.