If you could pick any fictional animal to be your lifelong companion (like a Pokémon or fantasy pet), what would it be?
If I could have any fictional animal as a lifelong companion, it would almost certainly have to be a dog — though choosing which one takes me straight back through childhood television and books.
There was Spotty Dog in The Woodentops, one of my very earliest television memories, forever bounding about in that rather strange little wooden world. Then Dougal in The Magic Roundabout: shaggy, sardonic and somehow considerably more knowing than most of the humans around him. Dill the Dog wandered through The Herbs, and Roobarb careered through Roobarb and Custard in that wonderfully scratchy, anarchic world.
But then there were the two great dogs of my reading childhood: Snowy in The Adventures of Tintin and Snoopy in Peanuts. Snoopy was magnificent because he hardly seemed to be a dog at all. He was a novelist, a First World War flying ace and the centre of an extraordinarily elaborate private universe.
For a lifelong companion, though, I think I would choose Snowy. He went everywhere with Tintin — across deserts, mountains and oceans, into caves, castles and innumerable scrapes — loyal without ever becoming merely obedient. He had opinions, weaknesses and a life of his own.
That seems about right. If I am going to have a fictional dog beside me for the rest of my life, I don’t particularly want a pet. I want a travelling companion.
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