After we bought a place on my father’s hill farm in 2000, I’d study the notices pinned to boards in post offices-cum-stores across Exmoor in a glazed trance. If we got a puppy, I reasoned, as I studied a blurry Kodak photo of a Cadbury-coated labrador gun dog’s melting mega-litter, I’d stop wanting another baby. The children would sally forth into the great outdoors without complaint at the word ‘walkies’. Our love of the dog would carry us through the ups and downs of family life and – here was the kicker – render the five-hour schlep from London to Exmoor, to an unimproved farmhouse sans TV at the end of a two-mile track, non-negotiable.
And then, driving down a steep hill outside Exford one day, I screeched ‘STOP!’ just past a five-bar gate. I’d spotted a tumble of black puppies romping in the yard.
Ivo slipped the surprised farmer £40 for the quietest lab-collie-cross bitch and the children held the black bundle until we got a crate and all the other canine impedimenta in Dulverton. From that day, it was regime change. It was Dog First.
Dog ownership is not without its ‘challenges’ as we say now, and puppies are… a lot. Coco shredded our Turnell & Gigon curtains. She chewed Ivo’s Lobb brogues.
Then there was the time I’d ordered new linen for the children’s bedrooms. The very next day, Coco had ‘an accident’ in the back of the Volvo, self-basted in the liquid muck, ran into the house before I could catch her and rolled it off on the crisp, snowy beds fresh-dressed by the White Company.
Later, when she was bigger, she came into Covent Garden with me every day for my editorship at the Lady (RIP). When I was booted upstairs on a six-figure salary, my only duty was penning a little snippet called ‘Coco’s Corner’ for the esteemed gentlewoman’s weekly in the voice of the office dog. I like to think Coco was for a time, pro rata, the highest paid columnist on Fleet Street.
When she died, we buried her in the garden and were suspended in mourning for five years, a bardo broken only by Covid.
Then, like a million other suckers as lockdown loomed, I bought a dog. This time, there were no illusions that she would be for the children, as they had flown the coop. It meant that that cringey thing you and I wince and shudder to behold in other pet-owners happened to us: she became our baby.
I like to think our dog Coco was for a time, pro rata, the highest paid columnist on Fleet Street
I blame the vibe shift when it comes to pet ownership, since my grandparents had a pack of up to seven dogs, an inbred variegated mix of working collies and vicious house terriers, on the farm. The rationale behind this new attitude to our pets is they will only be with us for a portion of our lifetimes, but they are with us for the entirety of theirs, so it is our bounden duty as ‘caregivers’ to make sure they live their best life.
We sent our children to boarding school, but we pay for Cambridge graduates called Olivia to dogsit Ziggy (Coco’s replacement, a disobedient, mutinous apricot cockapoo from Somerset) when we go away. So she isn’t homesick. I used to cut my children’s hair but Ziggy has a monthly wash, snip and blow dry costing £70 at Yuppy Puppies.
We all use ‘our NHS’ with gratitude but Ziggy has a private vet and has already had three complicated surgeries costing more than a term’s school fees. Her food cost almost as much as her hair until we discontinued her Butternut pouches of fresh lamb, tender beef and chicken (for variety) for posh kibble. I could go on… I’m very much afraid we also discuss the consistency and frequency of her poos as if she were a newborn, often in public. ‘Two nice, big hard ones followed by a (adjectives deleted for reasons of taste) one,’ runs a sample of our daily bulletins.
It is our bounden duty as ‘caregivers’ to make sure our dogs live their best life
The tech bros know the way to our pockets is via our pets so we get endless posts about Pappy the Poodle – who walks on his hind legs – green dental powder and great, fluffy double dog beds for smitten owners to sleep with their pets.
That level of co-dependence is always a possibility if the grandchildren still fail to manifest. (Ziggy, who was supposed to never come upstairs, now occupies our bed during the daytime. In fact, I’ve bought a dusky-pink Welsh blanket for her added comfort.)
This, then, is why we are spending the children’s inheritance on a curly yapping ball of knitting who has never once said thank you but then, why should she? Nothing else comes close to having an unpaid personal trainer/companion/emotional support animal/family conversation piece every day.
Even the most transactional Trumpian analysis would conclude that the benefits far outweigh the costs of dog ownership.
Comments