They came in their droves. Labradors, Alsatians, French bulldogs, Spaniels, Cavapoos, Cockapoos, Labradoodles, Corgis, like a roll of dog poo bags, the list goes on. No sooner had Boris locked us up in the March sunshine last year than the nation rushed to acquire a dog.
After years of standing firm, parents finally gave in to their children’s pleas and took the plunge. Those living alone, confronted with the prospect of indefinite confinement, threw caution the wind (and their furniture) and gave in to the idea of a dog. Those who had not owned a dog for years, decided they would once more fling themselves unto the canine breach. I know all of this because when I walk my Pointer, Percy, in the fields and parks around my house I am assailed by people with boisterous puppies. I say I am assailed – really it is poor Percy – but like a Priest in the confessional people flock towards me to make their admission: they bought the dog in lockdown. Like honeymoon babies, lockdown puppies are the fruits of impulse and, perhaps, idiocy.
A year on, the dog is no longer a puppy, but a rambunctious adolescent canine. The owners, after a long winter of walking the dog in the cold and wet, are hardened. I am approached for confession less. I note the dogs’ leads and collars are frayed or patched up with masking tape, unmistakable signs of puppy vandalism (their houses will no doubt be completely trashed). But these dogs are the lucky ones. They are in the park and they have not been abandoned like so many others.
Since last year’s puppy boom, the Kennel Club reports that one in four Britons bought a puppy on impulse. The Dogs Trust reveals that more than 1800 people have called them in the last three months wanting to give up their dogs that are only a few months old. Faced with this crisis the RSPCA has reminded people that getting a dog “is a big decision that should come after research into what dog ownership means”. Dogs have been here before of course, the sorry victims of our rampant national anthropomorphism. From whence the immortal slogan from the Dogs Trust “A Dog is for Life not just for Christmas”, now over forty years old. In the wake of the pandemic the slogan has now been adapted to “A Dog is for life not just for Lockdown” but it may have come too late.
As most seasoned dog-owners will tell you, all dogs are to some extent acquired if not on impulse, then on fantasy. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. If we were too well acquainted with the reality of dog ownership and its relentless humilities, frankly no one would do it. The fortunes of dogs – and their positions upon our sofas – rest upon our ability to rose-tint the reality of such a commitment. In 2020, reality itself was so frightful to contemplate and so compressed into the short-term in graphs and slides, that the ten to twelve-year commitment of owning a dog became if not irrelevant, then impossible to compute in such an apocalypse. Under the stress of the pandemic, we Brits sought comfort in our national canine infatuation and binged on dogs, hundreds of thousands of them. Now sick with remorse, those who indulged say it is too much: the endless walks, the whining, the dirt, the expense. Once plastered all over Instagram their dogs are now the objects of resentment, chains that hold them back from the old life made new.
Bentham, better known for his theory of Utilitarianism, stated way back in the eighteenth century that animals deserve equal moral consideration to their human counterparts and that they do indeed suffer. Canine equality might be a stretch too far for the modern mind but Bentham’s high mindedness towards the animal kingdom serves as a reminder that dogs are far more than a blank canvas onto which humans write meaning.
Would-be owners spend hours researching the kindliest, friendliest breeds, paying thousands for the purest pedigrees. But no background check is carried out on the owner to ascertain whether they’re up to the task of caring for a dog. As such, we’re now in the midst of a puppy pandemic of our own making – one that’s only set to grow.
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