Martin Clunes on the chaos caused by his canine "Kray twins"
The Doc Martin star was enjoying country life with his family, but then along came two boisterous Jack Russell puppies.
The Doc Martin star was enjoying country life with his family, but then along came two boisterous Jack Russell puppies.
Being pinned down on a sofa and repeatedly licked isn’t what’s usually involved in the life of a Saga Magazine interviewer but, as I settle down to speak to Martin Clunes in his Dorset home, John – one of his Jack Russells – takes an instant shine to me, making a focused conversation quite tricky.
"Get down John, you twerp!" chortles Martin, 64, while enjoying a similar outpouring of doggy affection himself on the sofa opposite from an equally adoring Murray, who is John’s brother. Neither dog seems to have any intention of heeding their master, however, so the interview proceeds with John continuing to lap at my face delightedly before getting bored and tussling with Murray over a tennis ball – a fight Martin has to referee.
None of this should come as any great surprise, though, as Martin’s new book, Training John & Murray, is all about his rollercoaster relationship with the pair he jokingly refers to as "canine Kray twins". The book follows the journey from buying them as tiny pups in spring 2024 to discovering the concept of "littermate syndrome", a behavioural condition that can occur when two puppies from the same litter are raised together.
Little had Martin realised, when he bundled his two cute pups into the car on that spring day, that it’s unwise to get two puppies from the same litter, as they can often form an attachment to each other rather than their owners, resulting in erratic behaviour that can be hard to control.
In his book, Martin charts the long road to trying to re-establish order. Though told in his humorous voice, several chapters make it clear that for months he and his wife, TV producer Philippa Braithwaite, were at their wits’ end over the scale of the chaos the puppies created.
Indeed, Martin explains that, after the dogs – Foxwarren Jack Russells with innate hunting instincts – attacked both a deer and a sheep, he and Philippa were terrified that they would either commit "mass murder of lambs" on neighbours’ farms, or would end up killing themselves by running onto a road. After puppy-training classes failed to whip the dogs into shape, salvation only came when they found an expert dog trainer who instituted a rigorous regime for them to follow.
For weeks, they had to work with the dogs separately – four sessions a day of 20 minutes each, eight daily sessions in total. "Oh, my god, the repetition," recalls Martin. "For a while, it was so tedious – it stopped us being able to do anything else but we had no option. We’d got ourselves into a cul-de-sac because we hated the idea of splitting up the puppies, but we couldn’t control them."
He confesses to feeling "tremendous guilt" as it was he who’d pushed to get two puppies rather than one. "We had three elderly dogs at the time, and I didn’t think it was fair to introduce a lone pup into that scenario," says Martin, whose beloved 15-year-old Labrador Laura has since died.
Training John and Murray, by Martin Clunes, RRP: £22 (Michael Joseph). Published April 23.
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