Isle of Dogs: Why Clare Balding and wife Alice Arnold are building new dog-friendly dream home for pet they haven’t met yet

But that is exactly what broadcaster and Crufts host Clare Balding and her wife Alice Arnold intend to do as they continue to come to terms with the death of their Tibetan terrier Archie three years ago.

Archie, “a spoilt and wilful Tibetan terrier”, had been owned by Balding and Arnold for 15-and-a-half-years before he sadly had to be put down in the summer of 2020 with lockdown restrictions at the time meaning they couldn’t be with him in the vet’s surgery during his final moments.

Rather than rushing to fill the space that he left behind, the pair are waiting to have a new property built before taking the plunge.

Balding’s new book Isle of Dogs reveals more about the plan in a final chapter written by Alice.

“The garden needs to be safe and secure and big enough for our dog to have a really good run around,” it says. “We need to be near footpaths and maybe a dog-friendly park so that we can socialise with other dogs and dog owners.” Balding, whose book has come out this week and is appearing at Ilkley Literature Festival this Sunday, admits that what they are doing is “extreme” but sees the choice as the right one for them after behavioral problems with Archie relating to his guarding instinct and need for dominance that Balding believes may have been exacerbated by their living arrangements when he was a puppy.

"We have found a new property and started on the journey of building a house that will be perfect to bring a dog into,” Balding tells The Yorkshire Post.

"One of the mistakes we made with Archie is that when we moved into this house it wasn’t ready and there were builders in it still. I think that unnerved him and then I went away to cover the Beijing Olympics in 2008. You don’t understand how much those things have an impact on them. I take a lot of responsibility for putting him in situations that were more stressful than they needed to be.

"That’s why even though it costs more money to do it the way we are doing it, we won’t move until the house is ready. Then it will be settling the cats and then getting a dog. We want to do it so everything is ready for them rather than thinking we want a dog back in our life so let’s make it happen. That’s not fair.

"It is extreme but having known what happened with Archie it can change their personality and I don’t want to make that mistake again. It is a case of not rushing – rushing it for ourselves would be really selfish.”

The book takes on the broad topic of how dogs have shaped and influenced the people of this country down the millennia but it is also a personal exploration of the impact of losing a beloved pet. While the book is candid about some of Archie’s challenges, it also highlights what a central and positive part he played in their family life and how much he is still missed.

Balding, who has a picture of Archie as the screensaver on her phone, agrees that researching and writing the book has been part of her healing process – albeit not something she consciously set out to do. "I think it probably was and also that huge need in me to still want to be around dogs and talking to dog people,” she says.

"In a sense I’m not sure I realised it was about grieving but it is and also coming to understand our life had to change to bring a dog back into it again, particularly with two cats – one of which is very nervous. We need to create an environment where everyone has got their own space. The conclusion is not we’ve got a new dog, it is we need to change our life. So that is what we are doing.”

At the start of their relationship in the early Noughties, Balding says that while she had to pass a “stringent checklist” from Alice in regards to future aspirations about children (none), travel (lots) and where to live (Chiswick) she only had one ask – whether they could get a dog.

The book’s structure sees Balding travel around the country – frequently accompanied by Alice – to meet a variety of owners, breeders and experts and learn more about the nation’s love affair with dogs that lasted for millennia. She says that experience led her to come to the belief they could be better dog owners in future after using a variety of ‘coping’ mechanisms with Archie such as warning people to keep their distance from him and distracting him when he was being overly-protective about something like a pair of socks.

Balding says one of the people that helped her was professional dog walker Ellie Hart; a woman known as ‘The Fairy Dog Mother’ who had 70 dogs at her wedding. “I talked to her about it and she said you were doing the right things but just might have been doing them by accident. You realise, ‘I need to be better at this’. With dogs, unlike being a parent, you can be better at it next time.”

She says including the personal elements of her and Alice’s time with Archie was key to ensuring the book was not just a history of dogs, “which could be a bit dry”. "Anyone could do a cultural history of dogs in our country. I wanted to make it fun and with a greater understanding of what dogs bring to our lives.”

The book is also very much about the additional love and hugely positive impact dog ownership can have on a couple’s relationship.

The final chapter was written by Alice, a former Radio 4 continuity announcer who has become well-known nationally thanks to her appearances alongside Balding on Celebrity Gogglebox.

Balding says it was her suggestion that Alice wrote the final chapter. "That was me saying you better read this because I have taken the p*** out of you quite a lot and I asked do you want to do your own chapter? She reluctantly was cajoled into it and she is going to read it in the audiobook which I think will have even more impact because she has a fantastic reading voice.

"We did go on a lot of this journey together and it made sense you could hear that side of it.” The shared experience of owning Archie meant a great deal to them both. "We walked him together a lot so we walked together a lot and it is amazing how that works. You can talk about everything and nothing but it is amazing how that isn’t pressurised and just thoughts and concerns and dreams. That’s a lovely thing to do together.

"We have a friend network in London based entirely around the dogs Archie decided to make friends with. We’re still a tight group of friends now and that is lovely. I would often be away working a lot so Alice would walk Archie on her own but would never really be on her own because she would have all the other people around to bump into.”

Isle of Dogs by Clare Balding is out now. £22 (Ebury). She is appearing at the Ilkley Literature Festival on Sunday, October 15, at 2.30pm at King’s Hall.