A few readers have observed that it’s been a while since I have written about my occasionally infuriating dog Clancy.

Some of you even suggested the reason he’s been absent from these pages is because I accidentally/on-purpose killed him.

To allay these fears I took him into the office on Friday to have his picture taken with that day’s newspaper to prove that he is alive and well.

I have also included a photo of him by the fire at my house to show that he is actually very well looked after. For all my moaning, I love him dearly.

Getting that picture with the newspaper was traumatic for everyone in the newsroom. Everyone that is, except Clancy.

He was having a jolly old time with all the attention. It was the longest he has ever been inside without having a thong thrown at him.

The reason he’s back in the headlines today is this: Clancy has developed a drooling problem.

Irish red setters are known for their looks, not their intellect (living with him is what I imagine having Channing Tatum as a roommate is like) so I’m not surprised his brain has remained the size of a pea, but I didn’t expect his saliva glands to grow the way they have.

For some reason, over the past few months, there’s a constant goozey flow leaking from his mouth. It’s like there’s a tap in there.

I’m thinking of renting him out to DFES to help put out spot fires in the summer.

It used to be just when he was waiting for food. I always force him to sit still before he wolfs down his dinner and he has always drooled a little in anticipation of hoovering up whatever lips and arseholes are in the dog sausage in front of him but recently it looks like his jaws are connected to the floor by stalactites.

To make matters worse, his left jowl has a habit of getting caught above his teeth, so he looks like he has had a stroke.

It’s been normal for him to get a bit of a frothy muzzle when he is running but over the past few weeks, he looks like he has rabies whenever he is at the local park.

When he shakes his head dollops of his own grossness end up going everywhere. Look closely at the inset picture and you will see one on the top of his head. I had to wipe it off with a leaf.

He shook his head in the kitchen a few days ago and some drool landed on the steaks that were on the bench. Being cheap, I wasn’t going to throw it out so made a little mark with a knife while it was on the barbecue as a reminder to serve that one to the kids.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on the ground watching him run around the park looking like a deranged Cujo (or a kid who had eaten too much sherbert) when he bounded past me at the exact moment he was shaking his slobbery head.

One of the globs landed straight in my mouth. I mean right in. I felt it hit my tonsils.

If you were at a park last month and saw a ginger bloke dry-retching next to a dog which looked like it had been doused with fire retardant foam, that was me and Clancy.

It was so disgusting just writing about it is making me want to throw up in the wastepaper bin under my desk.

Getting the leash around his head when it’s time to take him home is a revolting chore because I always end up covered in slimy goo.

I therefore try to lasso him from a distance.

It’s like some low-rent scene from Yellowstone. Unfortunately, a cowboy I am not, so I end up getting the leash covered in drool as well as my hands and whatever part of my clothing is flapping in the wing generated by his hysterical panting.

This animal runs himself so ragged that after doing a few laps of the oval he could replace the bellows in a blackmith’s forge.

Firing froth-bombs at random passers-by isn’t the only embarrassing thing he does at the park; he eats anything organic that he walks past, which results in erratic stools.

I don’t know what he ate a couple of days ago but whatever it was it bound him up like Tarzan’s Grip.

He had to hold his squat for so long his hind legs started shaking. Then again, it could have been nerves; he knew I was watching him and it’s always a shy poo when he has an audience.

I don’t know why an animal that spends half his life licking his own bum gets self-conscious about toileting, but that’s Clancy.

His bashfulness is even more perplexing given he has no problem with eyeballing me at close range if our situations are reversed and I happen to be on the throne.

He’s happy to sit there in the toilet with me, which is evidence of his devotion to me considering his nose is 1000 times more sensitive than mine.

Regular readers would remember I have been compiling a list of day-to-day things that piss me off and have put up a bottle of Penfolds Bin 389 as a prize for the best gripe sent into me.

One reader (rather unkindly, I think) suggested his pet peeve was journalists who wrote about their dogs.

“Dogs annoy people by barking and creating a disturbance all hours of the day and night, bite exposed flesh, often shed hair, do not pick up their own poop, hump any leg in sight, slobber when they eat and drink, are unproductive and are financially dependant for their entire lives and are gender-biased in that they are only a man’s best friend,” he wrote.

“Basically, dogs are toddlers that never grow up or get potty trained. To quote W. C. Fields: ‘the advantages of whiskey (or Penfolds Bin 389) over a dog as a companion are legion. To begin with, whiskey does not need to be periodically wormed’.”

Can’t argue with my grumpy correspondent on that count!