In rusted collars and empty chairs, I still live with my beloved ghosts

Olive the dog sitting sentinel in Paul Daley's late father's antique armchair. Photograph: Paul Daley

Sometimes it seems like my world is inhabited by ghosts, such are the remnants and reminders of past lives all around me.

The dead dogs are everywhere. On a coatrack on the hallway wall just near the front door outside my study hang their sun-bleached and harbour-rusted collars and leads, memorial stalactites to much-loved animals who’ve never really left us. Their tags are clipped on the fridge and one is screwed into the tree in the back yard under which its wearer is buried.