My pet Dachshund was a messy eater for the longest time. I spent a good part of 2010 scooping dog biscuits and gravy off the floor with my bare hands, scrubbing the gravy off his ass (you’ll find out how that happened later) and checking his dish for traces of dog poo (there you go). I tried to train him but how do you explain to a dog that a square meter of parquet flooring costs a bomb to clean and polish and that a food dish does not also double up as a toilet? Fortunately, he figured it out on his own.