We buy dogs to reflect ourselves. So who’s buying all these killer pitbulls?

I’ve called the doggie hospital three times now to find out how Jessie’s getting on. She’s just come round, at the time of writing. I think it’s partly guilt which makes me keep ringing up: we’re paying to have her ovaries ripped out with a small hook-like device, which seems to me a betrayal of the trust shown in us by the dog. She thought she was just going for a quick ride in the car and clearly didn’t understand why everyone was being so nice to her, so solicitous.

Seven months old and, before her first season, she is being deprived of the undoubted pleasures of being on heat. It is surely the right of every bitch to behave, once a year, like Sally Bercow. There’s a large labrador nearby which clearly wants to give her one (Jessie, not Sally): not any more he won’t.

Having a puppy spayed is, I think, high-handed, cruel and drastic — the kind of thing a really nasty social services department might do to mentally infirm adults, or perhaps simply adults who the grim-faced social workers have discovered intend voting for the United Kingdom Independence Party. It all seems terribly unfair. She’s called Jessie, by the way, after Jesse Owens, because she’s black and runs really fast.

Our dog is a collie-lab cross, which I thought might display to the world the traits we value — i.e., intelligence, vigour and being middle class. I assume this is how most people select dogs for pets, a sort of reflection of how they see themselves or wish people to see them. This would explain why the northern untermenschen tend to go for snarling pitbull terriers, ferocious rottweilers, lanky, feral dobermans and the like — all called Tyson or Satan and all destined, within a few weeks, to maim or kill a very young or elderly member of their families.