Louise O'Neill: 'Meet the new addition to our family'

"It’s lovely coming down to the kitchen every morning and to find Cooper waiting, turning over so I can give him a belly rub."

Cooper investigates Louise O'Neill's Christmas tree

Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions last year? Did you stumble across the list at some point in 2020, laughing hollowly as you saw your vows to travel more (ha), to have more patience with your kids (I’ll take a wild guess that home schooling soon put paid to that) and to eat less sugar (yet another batch of cookies are baking, how about you?). 

I was about to start building work on my own place in January and my boyfriend and I decided that when the renovation was complete, we would be ready to take the next step. No, not that next step. We were going to get a dog.