Is it just ME?

Or are empty nesters who get dogs a real pain?

I HAVE nothing against dogs — as long as they don’t have their snout anywhere it shouldn’t be without an invitation. But dog

owners I find excruciating. As so many fellow empty nesters are plugging their gap with a dog, it has become impossible to avoid them.

The friends I used to meet exercising their children in the park are now busy exercising their dogs instead. You can’t meet them for a coffee without a yomp round a field with a yapping Yorkie, and dog treats zinging past your ear to the praise of ‘good boy’, when they’ve done no more than fetched a ball. A slobbery ball they expect me to throw for them.

These are people who filter tap water and wash bananas. But doggie-drool? It’s practically holy water to them.

Two of my friends have ceded offspring to Oxbridge and gained brainless hounds instead. They take precedence above all else. The friends spend more money on the dogs’ grooming regimes than on their own, and one of them takes two holidays a year — one of which is a week in a caravan in Scotland for labrador Maisie.

A relative, an esteemed academic who hasn’t sent his grandchildren a birthday card for a decade, recently sent his dog to a psychologist because it was off its food.

No person liberated from child-rearing should then leave the theatre early because their dog is alone. And they should be able to come to dinner without their plus-one being a cockapoo.

Then there’s the endless dog chat, where people are identified by the breed of their pet (‘Oh we ran into sheepdog in Waitrose.’ ‘I think the Airedales are on holiday.’) And when their dog jumps on you with muddy paws, they smile fondly at Dolly the Doberman, who apparently ‘likes you’.

Having brought up four of the real things, I don’t need a dependent being whose lavatory habits I have to be on plastic-bag-terms with.

And I really don’t understand why you do.

They spend more on the dog’s grooming than they do on their own