At first my ageing parents were wary of my dog, now they can’t get enough of him

Odie started ‘great-grandma day care’ one day a week. Now, they miss him when he hasn’t surfaced for a couple of days. Photograph: Ranjana Srivastava/The Guardian

“Why do you want a dog? Don’t you have enough to do?”

To be fair, my parents had reacted similarly to my decision to have a third child and acquire another degree, so I huffed in a fit of bravura, “Well, you don’t have to look after it.”