All dogs cock their heads to the side when listening intently but my mother’s dog Chilli does it a lot more than most: she tilts when you use words that she knows, such as ‘cheese’, ‘where’s Annie?’, ‘biscuit’ etc. When she was younger she also tilted at high sounds but that’s worn off now, but the other day we were at a wedding anniversary and someone had got their clarinet out, as you do, and before launching into his piece he was playing some scales—that had her tilting away.

For the first time ever we manged to capture Chilli tilting on camera:

Here’s another of her that I like; she’s a lot younger here, as you can see by the way her nose hasn’t turned pink yet: