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I've grown up with dogs and love dogs.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren't the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

Growing up human is uniquely a matter of social relations rather than biology. What we learn from connections within the family takes the place of instincts that program the behavior of animals; which raises the question, how good are these connections?

When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

Dogs are more of a responsibility than kids - you can send a kid off to their grandparents or a nanny, but with a dog you can't do that.

Loving and parenting a dog as a single parent can create all sorts of new and unusual problems, but also new sources of joy.

Animals are sentient, intelligent, perceptive, funny and entertaining. We owe them a duty of care as we do to children.

My maternal desires are fully satisfied with my dogs.

First and foremost I am a commercial writer, and I hope to entertain people. But having said that, I'm in love with the relationship between humans and dogs, and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing, I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.