I’m writing this in a coffee shop. I write most things in coffee shops but I’ve never been to this one before. As I paid for my latte, I noticed the sign (below). Never mind Brexit or Palestine, I can’t think of an issue that will divide the nation like this will. People will immediately take sides and, like Brexit or Palestine, I think we all know which side will be the more voluble. And it won’t be the side who sigh with relief and think, ‘at last!’
The British are famously a nation of dog lovers but has that love has gone a little too far? The Pope certainly thinks so. Last year, he incurred the unholy wrath of dog owners by declaring that ‘dogs now sometimes take the place of children’. As a spectacularly lapsed Catholic, it was very odd to find myself nodding in agreement with His Holiness.
I’ve never owned a dog nor understood why anyone would want to. My wife and I frequently look after her friend’s labradoodle – a perfectly delightful dog – yet this has left me more bewildered by dog lovers.
Some may be trying to fill a void in their lives
Not about the obvious downsides like the constraints on your freedom or the fleas and faeces; instead, I’m more baffled by the things people claim to love about dog ownership.
Let’s start with ‘They’re such good company’. Really? Wouldn’t you prefer the company of your own species? Someone with whom you can talk, rather than someone at whom you can talk? Or is the mute obedience the thing you really like? That ‘unconditional love and loyalty’ which does sound like the sort of devotion that only a narcissist or a dictator would demand.
‘Dogs are so funny’. Are they? You throw the stick, they fetch it for you. How many times can you find this amusing? It’s not exactly Live at the Apollo. Wading into weirder waters, we have the ‘dog voice’. That peculiar, cutesy tone which otherwise intelligent people adopt when talking to their dogs. Fine when talking to a baby because you’re establishing the building blocks of human dialogue but when talking to a dog, it’s a little creepy.
Though even this seems relatively sane compared with the dog lovers who pretend that that they’re the dog’s parents, referring to themselves as ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’. Anyone else find this genuinely disturbing? I’ve known older people whose grown-up children have bought a puppy and they announce that they now have a ‘grandchild’. My heart breaks for them because I know that what they really want is a human one.
Since the pandemic, Britain’s dog population has risen by more than four million, which is why you now find them barking in coffee shops and in other places they never barked before. On public transport, for example, where people who imagined they could work from home forever have reluctantly returned to the office but are bringing their pooches with them.
It seems so cruel to force dogs to endure the suffocating squeeze of the Bakerloo line and inconsiderate to expect other passengers to squash themselves uncomfortably close to a cockapoo. Many dogs now spend all day in offices but did anyone ask the people who work there whether this was OK? It certainly wasn’t OK for a friend of mine who was bitten quite badly by a colleague’s (probably bored and frustrated) dog.
However, if you express these misgivings, you risk that familiar charge being slung at you: ‘You just don’t like dogs, do you?’ In my case anyway, this simply isn’t true. It’s not dogs that make me feel uncomfortable, it’s the idea of people owning another living creature simply for their personal gratification.
Obviously sheep dogs, guide dogs and drug-sniffer dogs are owned for vital and noble reasons. As are the canine saints employed by a wonderful charity called Our Special Friends to comfort those suffering from loneliness or trauma. The vast majority of dog owners, however, keep their four-legged friends for rather different reasons. Some may be trying to fill a void in their lives, while others clearly enjoy exerting the sort of control that no human would allow.
Quite a few seem to harbour a mistrust of human beings, openly admitting to preferring dogs to people. I heard one well-known BBC presenter declare that you’re ‘not a proper person’ unless you love dogs. And that’s the problem – dog lovers frequently berate the rest of us for not sharing their adoration, implying that they’re nicer people than we are.
Though how often have you found the opposite to be true? Those who are great with dogs aren’t always so great with people. Is the tide finally turning? Are we becoming kinder and more sensible about dog ownership and more considerate to other human beings? If that sign in this coffee shop is anything to go by, I think we might be. The reason I’ve never been here before is that, not surprisingly, it’s always packed.
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