Clare Balding admitted she thought her beloved dog was her mother, but she was barking up the wrong tree.
The BBC Sports presenter, 52, felt she was a dog since she spent so much time as a youngster with her family’s dogs.
Clare grew raised as the daughter of world-renowned horse trainer Ian Balding and his wife Emma Hastings-Bass, so it’s no wonder she thought her family roots were quite paw-sible.
Reflecting on her paw-some upbringing, she explained: ‘I did think I was a dog really because I was left with the dogs quite a lot I think. I may even have genuinely believed that Candy, who was my mother’s boxer, was actually my mother.’
The Channel 4 star continued to the Wine Times podcast: ‘There’s a really sweet picture of me as a baby lying next to Candy and my mother always said and I do think this is quite profound, “If you think a boxer has a beautiful face, the world will always be a beautiful place.”
Clare has even been able to translate her passion of dogs into her renowned broadcasting career, as a long-time presenter of Crufts TV coverage.
She also hosts the Channel 5 show Lost Dog, Found Dog, in which she helps pet owners find their misplaced dogs.
Clare just released the dog history book Isle of Dogs: A canine trip throughout Britain, and she previously published her autobiography My Animals and Other Family in 2012.
In the podcasting world, Clare hosted Dogcast in 2020, a show on the various ways dogs touch our lives.
That same year, Clare reported that her beloved Tibetan terrier, whom she shared with wife Alice Arnold, had died at the age of 15.
Late this summer, Clare wrote in the Daily Mail she and Alice were still on the hunt to find another pet dog, noting: ‘There is no quick and easy fix to finding the perfect dog, but maybe that’s as it should be.
‘We shouldn’t be able to click a button and have a dog arrive by post to fill a hole in our lives. We should have to think about it, work at it and be properly prepared.
‘There are so many ways that dogs offer us their service but more important is to offer them ours.’
Source My Celebrity Life.