Reading these books, I begin to wonder if Watch the dog is still alive. He's always left behind, and the kids spend so little time at home that he really could be taxidermied and left in a corner and how would they even know? I will say, though, that whenever animals turn up in these stories the kids are always solidly on their side, so even if they don't realise that their own dog might actually be dead, they do good work looking after the targeted animals here. Although why they're always hanging about that little monkey when they could be helping out with the elephants I don't know...