Dear Mum and Dad, it’s your dog Clancy writing from his home in the city. Around this time of year, humans make their pledges for the year ahead and I don’t see why dogs should be any different. I see 2024 as the beginning of a new me, and so here are my New Year’s resolutions.

From January 1, I will no longer consider two walks a day sufficient for my health, nor for the health of the humans with whom I co-habit. Using my chief means of persuasion – staring mournfully at the humans as they laze about, then dropping my leash at their feet – I intend to initiate walks at least three times a day. Yes, there’s self-interest in it, but I also see myself as a personal trainer, inspiring my humans in the cause of delaying their inevitable physical decline. One day, they’ll thank me.

Naturally, with this much exercise, we’ll need an increase in my calorie intake, so I also see 2024 as the Year of Lunch. Why should dogs make do with two meals a day (some get only one!), while humans behave as if three meals is the bare minimum. Already, I’m forced to turn over my water bowl whenever I find it empty, and now plan to use the same technique with my food bowl. Here’s my new motto: “When the bowl is clattering, the caterers need to get cracking”.

I’m also planning some changes in my work life. For the past eight years, I have been assiduously digging holes in the backyard in the hope of finding a commercially useful lode of iron ore. Always keen to give Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest a run for his money, I’ve chosen to concentrate my efforts on a small patch of muddy earth, right outside the back door, a location that Man describes as “a bloody annoying spot for that dog to keep digging a hole”.

I find his language unnecessary but am willing to accept that, after eight years of fruitless exploration, I need to move on. There’s an area of lush grass, right under the clothes line, that will soon be rewarded with my attention. Once the hole has filled with rainwater, I might try panning for gold.

Another pledge relates to my reaction to thunderstorms. I am old enough to have lived through dozens of them and have always survived. The roof of the house has not fallen in; lightning has not snaked through the window and struck dead a single member of the household. And yet still, I shake and cower.

Adding to the problem: the thunder is often so distant that the humans cannot hear it. All they see is me trembling – and for no apparent reason. This is not my fault. Humans have the most inadequate hearing. Unlike a kelpie, their ears don’t even swivel! All the same, with the aim of aiding household harmony, I pledge to delay the whole “I’ve just seen a ghost” act until the thunder is at least audible to the suboptimal species with whom I share the house.

How else might I improve myself? I’d like to take more time savouring my meals. Currently, I suck up my dinner in as little as seven seconds. In the years ahead, I want to make eating more of an occasion – enjoying each morsel, giving thanks to the earth for its bounty, and appreciating the person who so lovingly prepared my meal.