If your dog is your god, you’ve got it back to front
Disclaimer: I like dogs. I even love some of them. A black Lab’s seal-like face and wry grin? The soulful friskiness of a golden retriever? Both melt my heart. In fact it’s been observed more than once that I’m much more at ease showing my love for cute dogs than I am for babies. I smother them in kisses and caress them to annoyance. I also know what it is to mourn a pup: my grief at losing childhood dog Vega when I was eight taught me how deep human feeling can run for a furry compadre.
So I speak as a canine sympathiser when I address my fellow Britons and ask – nay, plead – that you please get a grip when it comes to your dogs. The nation’s feelings towards its hairy friends has totally departed the domain of the dignified and firmly entered the sphere of the ludicrous, embarrassing and concerning – for both dog and human. Dogs are animals, after all, and need to be treated as such, not like precious baubles requiring every luxury.
I’ve long felt consternation at overhearing dog owners plead loquaciously with their pets. My friend Michael, a ruminative scholar of history, has wryly observed that
A survey found that a third of Londoners would put their pet before their offspring
when he overhears the plaintive cry of “Ludo, please!” on Hampstead Heath, his game is to guess whether the agitated denizen of NW3 is calling for their dog or their toddler.
But things have now gone far beyond the obsessive pampering of pooches, talking to your dog like he’s the Dauphin, or asking her politely to stop pulling on the lead (Fluffy doesn’t care about your syntax). Last week brought tidings that many Britons actually seem to be more concerned for the prospects and quality of life of their dogs than those of their actual human children. A survey for Foxtons found that a third – a third! – of Londoners said they would put their pet before their offspring when moving house. That’s right. Ensuring that Mr Woofy was “happy in the space” trumped finding a property in a good school catchment area. In addition, 65 per cent of Londoners surveyed said they would give up their dream dre home if Ludo the dog didn’t give it the paws up. Surely there was not always such open disregard for the boundaries between animals and family members? Is it not the sign of a broken society when the likes of dog accessory entrepreneur Emily Hunt, 31, tells of her and her partner’s move from Putney to East Sheen in the following terms? “Percy comes first. He is like our child, and we’re not the only people to think that. We were quite happy in Putney, but Percy is our pride and joy.”
My friend Kate, now in her forties, remarked on the strange ironies of this attitude, observing that when she had small children, her many friends without kids (they preferred partying instead) were cold and stern with them, annoyed if they made noise or a small mess. Now pooch-owners, the same friends demand of Kate (and her children) the utmost reverence for their doggy companions, expecting displays of kindness far exceeding anything they were willing to offer Kate’s actual human children.
The urge to treat dogs like royal guests is now untrammelled. Last week, dog owners were told off by the RSPCA for brushing their canines’ teeth with human toothpaste. This presumably comes from the same impulse behind the vogue to cook delicious food from scratch for the beloved drool-machines. (Let me note here that my second childhood dog, Popsy, who lived to a ripe old age, was fed nutritious pellets from an enormous sack called “Science Diet” and never had her teeth brushed. She was also healthy, fit, and impeccably mannered.) Then there are the 30 per cent of owners who lose sleep over holidaying without their dogs, according to a survey by dog-friendly holiday park provider Haven.
Britons have always been keen on their pets. Animals provide an outlet for the demonstrative affection and emotion we often suppress when it comes to other people. Showering kisses on a sausage dog can seem easier than doing so on a teenager – even if that teenager is your child.
But we have surely entered a new phase of displacement and projection of human feeling on to dogs. Why might this be? My hypothesis: we live in times in which young people have gone off sex and drinking, people are having fewer children, we’re told everything is bad for us, and we all stare at screens all day feeling ever more atomised and alone. Small wonder, then, that pooches have become the last outlet for passionate feeling. Moreover, in a climate in which even long-term couples now routinely practice open relationships, dog ownership may well be the last available genuine commitment.
This just makes it all the more sad. Because in giving dogs human or, more accurately these days, godlike status, we deny them their right to be doggy, and in doing so, their integrity. And there’s nothing adorable about that.