Ban plastic and puppies from under your tree

ONE of the more odious aspects of celebrity culture was the reinvention of the canine companion as fashion accessory, a trend born in 2002 when ditzy Elle Woods, the lead character in ‘Legally Blonde’, stuffed her chihuahua into her designer handbag and set about acquiring herself a law degree.

It was funny in the film but it was never funny in real life: the sight of an overbred pedigree pup parading alongside its proud owner has always made me wince.

Owning a dog should be about caring and companionship, not about complementing the colour of your coat.

Anyway, the horrific consequences of such vain idiocy have finally come to light: pet-owners are abandoning their dogs in a pre-Christmas panic in order to make way for a new festive doggie. Older pets just don’t cut it in the cuteness stakes, apparently, and the lure of a fluffy new puppy is just too much to take.

“I just picked a dog up that was three, because the family were getting a pup. It’s despicable at a time that any old creature needs familiarity around them, they are abandoned,” animal welfare worker Fiona Gammell told the ‘Irish Examiner’, adding it was a new phenomenon and a byproduct of our throwaway culture.

So this seems to be how we ‘celebrate’ Christmas today: with a lorry-load of plastic toys under the tree that will be polluting our seas long after we’re all dead and buried, and puppies whose sell-by date is reached the moment their cuteness factor dips below 10.

I had been toying with the idea of getting a puppy this Christmas, but instead I’m adopting a new festive mantra: No plastic under the tree, and definitely no puppies. No matter how cute and fluffy.