“Thankfully today in your column you admitted that writings about your dog were not news. This is absolutely true and excruciatingly boring. So why have we had to endure this rubbish for the last few years? Hopefully we will not have to in the future.”

This email from a disgruntled reader landed in my inbox last Sunday, the day that my column included the following lines about what constituted “news”.

Reporters don’t chase the normal, the usual and the average because normal, usual and average events are not news.

Ben Harvey goes to work and writes a column about his dog isn’t news. Ben Harvey comes home from work and gets eaten by his dog is.

This chap (I will spare him the indignation of being named in what appears to be his least-favourite page in the newspaper) seized on it to vent about my occasional observations about life with my dog.

The reader will probably cancel his subscription when he reads today’s column because not only is it about Clancy the Irish red setter, it’s about Clancy’s increasingly frequent farting.

I don’t think you could get a less newsworthy topic if you tried!

It’s not that Clancy has just started doing this; he’s never been afraid to drop his guts.

The “news” is that he now farts exclusively when he is sitting on a mat at the back door of our house.

You can see him assuming the position in the photo above.

We don’t know why that mat is so important. The kids have a theory that he relaxes when he’s on it because it’s warm compared with the tiled floor.

Within a few seconds of him placing himself there, he’ll let one rip.

It’s like clockwork.

The TRG should use him to clear rooms when they raid bikie clubhouses.

He’s become a gassy dog despite the fact his diet hasn’t changed.

I had gone through a phase of cooking him up “pet mince” from our local butcher (unmentionable parts of animals you have never heard of blended together) but he is now on Prime100 dog sausage and Royal Canin dry biscuits.

Well, not just those things; we pretty much feed him any organic matter that’s leftover in the kitchen.

You know how when you finish washing the dishes there’s all the sloppy leftover plate-scrapings in the strainer in the sink?

That goes in the dog bowl.

Before anyone reports me to the RSPCA, please know this is an animal who I have seen eat his own poo, spew it up, eat the spew and then lick his own bum to get the taste out of his mouth.

Then there’s the stuff Clancy eats when he thinks we’re not watching.

I once saw him wolf down an entire uncooked corn on the cob after stealing it off the kitchen bench.

It was a crime but one not as bad as that committed by my mum’s dog, a Beagle named Bella, who once ate two massive chicken breasts that were completely frozen.

Imagine the brain-freeze from that!

So, the fart phenomenon isn’t because of a changed diet.

And it’s not worms because we always remember to give him his monthly Simparica tablet.

I once mistook one of those for a Panadol (whilst especially bleary-eyed one morning) and though it did nothing for the headache, I haven’t had an itchy bum since.

I would take Clancy to the vet to sort out his gut issues, but she has retired early courtesy of our frequent previous visits and is currently holidaying in Barbados.

Our last appointment (which came courtesy of a grass seed in his paw) ended with the clinic giving me several packets of post-surgical drugs in a brown paper bag.

Then they gave me the bill, which made me need to breathe into the brown paper bag.

And consider taking the drugs.

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