TAILS OF THE CITY
Kate Spicer on urban canine companionship
our family lore dictated that having a dog in London was terribly cruel unless it was a very tiny one, and that kind was NQOCD: not quite our class, dear. It was the ultimate middle-class catch-22, and it took me nearly 30 years of adulthood before I dared break away. And guess what? As long as you walk them, metropolitan dogs have a fabulous life, even the big ones like my lurcher Wolfy Wolfington. Family lore turned out to be codswallop – again.
Dogs have a gas in the capital. For their kind, every busy park is like my dream night out in the Nineties at a privatemembers’ club: meeting alluring members of the opposite sex; running around and making messes someone else is going to have to clean up. Hampstead Heath is basically the Groucho for dogs. It’s fantastic for human clubbability, too. If it hadn’t been for Wolfy, I might never have discovered that it’s not Laura Bailey or Bella Freud’s house but Wormwood Scrubs park where you scrabble your way up the next two rungs of Notting Hill society; that cheery waves while dog walking are a far more elegant way to make connections than grasping for invites to the neighbourhood’s most talked-about kitchen suppers.
To enjoy a wide gamut of social opportunities, London hounds must be well trained. You see, lots of the smart places don’t advertise the fact that they let dogs in; instead, they wait until the devoted owner rings up and asks, as I do. We have even dined at Locanda Locatelli, the fantastic Michelin-starred Italian restaurant behind Selfridges. ‘If he’s a good boy, why not?!’ exclaimed its formidable matriarch, Plaxy (a devoted mistress herself, to Olive the cockapoo).
If Wolfy had been badly behaved, he wouldn’t have been able to come again. But he is a London dog to his light and elegant bones – one with impeccable manners. He squeezed down beside me at the chef’s table where they put canine sorts (it’s where Lucian Freud would eat, sometimes also with his whippet). A brisk walk through Hyde Park, en route to a very fine lunch with a four-legged friend: I’m not sure it gets much better than that. When a man is tired of London, he needs to get a dog. ‘Lost Dog: A Love Story’ by Kate Spicer (£8.99, Ebury Press) is out now in paperback. London Dog Week runs from 23 to 29 March (www. londondogweek.com).