The family in the doghouse

The dog trainer gave notice a week ago. The pup had shamed him, ignoring rather than listening to his commands. Around the time he was drafting his resignation - the first time, he says, he was conceding defeat to a canine - food writer Farzana Contractor had checked into a resort accompanied by her two-year-old Apso that was the model of good behaviour, perched on her lap through all our meals in the dining hall where it did not once raise its head to sniff at the delicacies being served up by a celebrity chef. Coming back home, I was greeted by the sight of our family pet on the dining table licking the eggs akuri, sausages, papaya, oats, toast and slabs of butter clean in no particular order - with not a burp to show for it.

"Beagles," said his trainer, at the time when he was still there and we could reprimand him for the mutt's lack of progress on the behaviour front, "have an obedience issue." But at the design shop where I often work, the owner's Beagle, of approximately the same age as our pet, ambles in good-naturedly at lunchtime but fails to respond to either blandishments or tidbits from the dining table.

Our pup, when he can inveigle his way into the kitchen, noses about in the garbage pail for eggshells, bones and vegetable peels, leading guests to wonder whether we are starving him. While he is clearly no food connoisseur, he's proved game for trying anything at least once, including, recently, a bundle of currency notes that the neighbourhood bank has since turned into an exhibit for how consumers could be fined for disfiguring federal tender.

Because he's so badly behaved, we've taken to spending quiet evenings at home, lying to our friends to prevent them from coming over. Sarla's dogs are models of propriety, Padma's have been known never to beg, but put hors d'oeuvres and our family dog in the same room and chances are the guests will not see fit to eat. It's embarrassing to have a perpetually greedy dog who swallows his own treats and then wants yours, and howls if you leash him or lock him in another room, so you have no choice but to ask visitors to keep their drinks out of his reach because, of course, he makes no distinction between sneaking a lick of the children's cold coffee or your choice of whisky - preferring, I suspect, the latter, which at least quietens him down for a bit.

The dog therapist blames it on a lack of command. "Who's the boss in the house?" he asks. My wife and I throw out names of various in-laws - we will continue to fight about it later at home - while the children think it's the cook, but the therapist insists it's the pup who's taken charge of the clan, which is why he exercises his authority by not listening to anyone. He wants the sofa where I read my newspapers as his own.

At night, he wants all the bedroom doors open, so he can check where he wants to sleep, evicting hapless occupants from the use of their pillows. In the absence of midnight indulgences, he'll whine the house down, earning himself surreptitious treats of forbidden chocolate. As he gets heavier to pick up for his vaccination shot, the vet puts him on the weighing scale, tut-tuts about his weight, and admonishes us, "Are you sure you're giving him enough to eat?"