The decline of pet ownership is a tragedy

For a nation of animal lovers, the dog days are over. After decades of rises, the proportion of households that own a pet is now steadily declining – down from nearly two-thirds in 2012 to just over half last year. Figures out last week even showed that families were 10 times more likely to own a virtual assistant like Amazon’s Alexa than a hamster.

This should be baffling. The link between animals, health and happiness is well-documented. There is no evidence that fewer of us are aspiring to pet ownership, and acquiring your first family dog or cat remains an important rite of passage. To many people, getting a pet is the very definition of settling down.

And this, tragically, is much of the problem. The causes of this phenomenon are varied, but the rise of “Generation Rent” and the inability of many people to buy property have played a huge part. With growing numbers condemned to half a lifetime (or more) of renting, the opportunity to own a pet is decreasing rapidly. As anyone who has ever tried to move house with a cat or dog will attest, landlords – particularly in cities – are often reluctant to accommodate our fourlegged friends. According to the Dogs Trust, 78 per cent of owners have struggled to find pet-friendly rentals.

The peripatetic lifestyles of many city-dwellers also conspire against pet ownership. If you are moving flats every six months or so and work until stupid o’clock, you tend to avoid taking on the responsibility of a meltingeyed mongrel or “filigree Siberian hamster”, as Fawlty Towers’ Manuel referred to his pet rat. Animal shelters abound with dogs and cats their owners have been unable to take on to their next rental property.

It’s clear that many would-be owners feel the absence keenly. A yearning for a vicarious feeling of pet ownership explains the explosion of websites like Borrowmydoggy.com, which links dog owners with local borrowers. Petting zoos act as a magnet for city youngsters deprived of their own cat or dog.

There is a similar problem in later life. Experiencing an enthusiastic dog’s nonjudgmental delight at being stroked calms and boosts the mood of those suffering from depression, loneliness and even dementia. So the policy of many residential homes in banning residents from bringing much-loved pets with them exacerbates the growing problem of loneliness in old age.

What could be the effect of all this? A less happy society, certainly. Some cheekily suggest that owning a dog makes you more likely to vote Conservative.

But above all a feeling of thwarted ambition and loss. Home-owners can take pet ownership for granted. Dogs and cats are considered entirely part of the family – and when they “kick on” to their eternal happy hunting ground, their demise is often mourned just as keenly as that of human family members. T’was ever thus. Writing in the 18th century, Alexander Pope observed this same phenomenon: “Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast / When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.”

Sadly, for many of us, pets – even more than the big “happily ever after” wedding and the cottage with roses round the door – symbolise a level of stability and comfort we can no longer aspire to. FOLLOW Madeline Grant on Twitter @Madz_Grant;

at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

Somehow the Conservatives and their leader are going to have to find a way out of this. Not just the Chequers thing but the whole question of what their message is to be in the next few critical years. Chequers first – because it has to be dealt with somehow or other in Theresa May’s speech at party conference. Whatever the political or psychological reasons – I am personally beyond caring which it is – for the perverse position that Mrs May has insisted on maintaining, it is now utterly, definitively, resoundingly untenable. Salzburg and its aftermath may have provided the Prime Minister with an uncharacteristic Thatcher moment, but that respite from the storm was never going to survive its own contradictions.

That does not preclude the likelihood of her repeating the formula to the faithful in the hall to tumultuous applause. She is right to think that the country was insulted at least as much as she was, and that – for a brief moment – it and she were on the same righteous side. But that little burst of excitement in Birmingham will be over in a blink. Then comes the