I had raised dogs before I had children. Then I failed three times.

I grew up with dogs that had a place, a schedule and rules everyone followed. As an adult I raised my own, Guru, who lived his full life in my house. So when my children asked for a dog, I said yes the way someone who has done it before says yes: quickly.

That confidence lasted about ten days. Koudy, then Milo, then Snoopy — three dogs, the same breed, each gone within a few months. The pattern never changed. I was at work. The children loved the dog completely and followed no rules. And my wife, who is afraid of dogs, was left to negotiate every day with a large animal in her kitchen. Within weeks the house was exhausted, including the dog. All three went to families who could give them what we could not; my children still see them.

After the third, I stopped blaming myself long enough to look at what had actually happened. The variable was never the dog, the breed or the desire. It was the structure around the desire. So I did what I do at work: I researched, found the cause, and built a system — not a training programme, a household one. Who holds the leash. Who feeds. Where the dog sleeps. What the children’s jobs are. And what my wife’s real boundaries were, written down before the puppy came through the door. Her fear was not an obstacle to work around; it was the hardest case the system had to hold. If it held for the person who wanted the dog least, it would hold for anyone.

The fourth dog was Oden. He arrived into a house that was, for the first time, ready. He stayed. He is still here.

The system became two books: Before You Say Yes to the Dog, for deciding, and After You Say Yes to the Dog, for the first weeks. The practical parts are free, for families and for the people who work with them.

Away from the books I am a management consultant in Cairo — former CEO of the payments company CowPay, author of the first Egyptian case study in Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management, and a visiting professor at RB College in the UK. I founded Oden Pet, the practice software for canine behaviourists and dog trainers that carries the fourth dog’s name, and The KnowHow Company. I am not a dog trainer, and I say so.