This subject causes a lot of people huge problems, and none of them are necessary with a little care and a pint sized helping of determination on your part!

Unlike us, dogs don't need to have different foods every day, or every week, or every year; they can have more or less the same diet for life.

Whatever you feed your dog make sure it's the best quality you can supply. As long as the diet is well balanced there is no need whatsoever to add extra vitamins.

Until about the sixties, dogs would have fed on raw meat or tripe and maybe bones, supplemented with a biscuit meal: they thrived on this diet and very few problems ever occurred such as impacted anal glands. Their teeth would also have been much stronger and longer lasting.

Then came the new 'tinned foods', mainly cereal based with a meat derivative added. These foods were very palatable and soon became the much preferred choice for pet owners as the dogs fed on them were infinitely sweeter smelling to live with than those fed on raw meat or tripe! Tinned foods are now widely sold and are excellent for all breeds of dogs. It's important to feed the tinned food with a good biscuit or mixer, the latter being specially made for such feeding.

Almost at the same time, pet owners were being urged to feed 'dry food': this was a cereal based product with meat additives and again, highly palatable. They are meant to be fed alone, without the need for extra meat to be added.

I always struggled with this. I like to see and smell a nice bit of meat, so I, along with many others added a small amount of tinned food as well. This never caused any problems and the dogs loved it too.

The secret is to find out what your dog likes and stick to it! There is no need whatsoever to feed one sort of food one week and to change it for the next week. My own dogs eat the same food now that I've fed for many years; they love it; they look fantastic and keep healthy.

I get so many questions about dogs not eating and when I ask for the diet to be sent to me, so many people seem to chop and change. If you put down a food that the dog eats, then that's the food for him; if he learns to be fussy, he will lead you a merry dance and cause you great worry!

Start as you mean to go on; the fussiest feeders will soon realise that their food is there to be eaten up; failure to eat means losing his feed for that day…he will jolly soon twig! Mind you, Cavaliers can be very stubborn and often refuse to eat for a few days he's testing you by simply trying to make you give in and feed him the very best chicken!

Obviously, when you have a new dog you should follow the breeder's diet sheets and then get the puppy feeding on the food you want to give him. Don't overfeed, they are greedy dogs and soon pile on weight and that is very bad for their long-term health.

I have recently invested in a new bed after years of sleeping on hard mattresses and slats to ease an old back problem, I decided that a little comfort would be nice to see me into my dotage. My heart was set on the 'Rolls Royce' of beds.

The bed I chose has a medium mattress and is bliss to sleep on. It's the longest bed I've ever had, so my long legs stay under the duvet and I sleep well and seem to wake free from aches and pains; however, not everyone is happy!

The new bed is not only larger but it is much higher than the old bed and this has caused problems! As many of you know, I have long since given up trying to keep the dogs off the bed and whilst Meg can jump up with ease, Gertie, being somewhat older can't make it. She tried and tried and in the end we had to give her a little wooden box to act as a step. All is now well and we all sleep very soundly again!