Roy Keane’s dog wore a worried expression last night. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time for me,” said Triggs, speaking near a Cheshire lamppost. “Have you felt how cold it’s been over the last couple of days?”

The faithful retriever said that he feared another of the periods of intensive dog-walking that have traditionally been the stormy Irishman’s recourse in times of trouble and reflection. In 2001, after he was sent off for pushing Alan Shearer, Keane admitted that he “walked Triggs a long way” while he considered retiring from the game. As Triggs confirmed yesterday: “Five hours we were up there on that moor. I was cream crackered, I don’t mind telling you.”

The lead came out again when Keane stormed out on Ireland in 2002, and again after his departure from Manchester United in 2005. “Don’t get me wrong — I like a walk as much as the next dog,” Triggs said. “But this is on another level — the pace of it, the swearing, the throwing things. Not for me to fetch — just throwing things.”

Keane once said that he wouldn’t trust most football pundits to walk his dog. Triggs confessed that there were occasions when he regretted that policy. “I wouldn’t have minded Richard Keys, say, getting the nod, once in a while,” the dog claimed. “I don’t think we’d have gone anywhere near as far, nor as fast. And the language might have been better.”

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The dog maintained that he could sense the pressure and the fury mounting for Keane in recent days. “There were definitely signs after Sunderland’s 4-1 defeat by Bolton on Saturday,” the dog said. “If you hear Roy put his car in the garage without opening the door first, you know you are in for a bit of an evening. Rough and tumble doesn’t really begin to describe it.”

He said he was standing by him, though. “It’s a cliché, but at the end of the day, I’m his best friend,” Triggs said. “And I’m loyal, and he respects that, because, by and large, loyalty has gone out of the game.

“I always say to him, ‘Hey, Roy, what’s the secret of great management?’ And then we’ll both answer, ‘Winalot.’ He loves that. Cracks him up, every time.”

The dog added: “I probably won’t be using that line for a while, though.”