You only have to look at Pets at Home’s latest results — sales up 18 per cent over six months, profits soaring — to see we’re a nation of pet lovers. An incredible 3.2 million have bought a pet since the first lockdown, paying record amounts for pedigree pooches and designer cats. I imagine there will be more bought this Christmas given the latest work-from-home edict.
But while it’s fun to welcome pets into our families, they can make it harder for employees to tear themselves away from home when the time eventually comes to return to the office. Perhaps if reluctant workers were encouraged to bring their pets along, fewer would want to continue working from home. That isn’t a new idea. John Adams, the first American president to live in the White House, brought in a dog called Satan. He was also gifted a pet alligator by his friend the Marquis de Lafayette, which he kept in a bath tub.
Also at the White House, Woodrow Wilson kept a flock of sheep that grazed on the front lawn, and Andrew Jackson had a foul-mouthed parrot called Poll. Even at his funeral service in 1845, the bird had to be taken away because it started shrieking swear words.
Closer to home, No 10 Downing Street has a dog called Dilyn and Larry the cat, the chief mouser. As he says on his Twitter account — which boasts 470,000 followers — Larry has been in position at No 10 for ten years. That’s longer than the leader of any political party.
At Holidog, a Parisian pet-sitting agency, things haven’t been the same since Hector Bonaparte, a cheeky cockatoo, arrived at the office. The moment he realised he was living in an office, perched for most of the time on a kitchen cupboard, he took it upon himself to make sure all employees worked hard and took their tasks seriously. Hector rules the office, flying from desk to desk, getting cuddles from those he likes — and pooping on the keyboards of those he doesn’t.
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At the small group of pubs we own, we are proud to win dog-friendly awards regularly. We like canines a lot, but we also know their owners bring in plenty of business. At The White Eagle in Anglesey, more than 30 per cent of our guests bring a dog, probably partly because we have lots of water bowls, free dog biscuits and a simple “dog policy”. It goes like this: if your dog is the first in the room and is well-behaved, it can stay. If a second dog arrives and the first dog starts barking, the second has to leave. It’s a perk of arriving early.
Amazon is well known as a dog-friendly business. According to Rover, the pet-sitting and dog-walking service, dogs in the Amazon offices contribute to the company culture.
The value of dogs in providing emotional and mental support is increasingly recognised, with their presence reducing colleagues’ blood pressures, heart rates and anxiety levels. Pet charity Blue Cross says 90 per cent of businesses allowing dogs to work claimed to have seen nothing but positive changes. Half saw a reduction in absenteeism and over two thirds said it improved morale. Having pets at work is clearly good for business.
Recently, I visited a prison. The governor introduced me to the jail’s “stress dog”, Martin. I assumed Martin spent most of his time on the wings, helping reduce the prisoners’ cortisol levels, but on further investigation I discovered he purely reduced the stress of the prison officers. An opportunity missed, I suspect.
Earlier this year, while visiting our shop in Egham, Surrey, I spotted a hamster in a cage on the counter. I thought it was the shop’s pet but discovered it was part of a new pet-sitting service. As we have few rules, and this shop’s sales were lousy, the manager had taken it upon himself to get £20 for looking after the hamster while the owner spent a week in Tenerife.
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At our Wythenshawe office in Manchester, we have Duke, a friendly Staffordshire bull terrier who spends most of the day asleep behind reception. When a visitor arrives, he runs over and greets them with as much enthusiasm as a kid in a sweet shop.
There is always some busybody, though, waiting in the wings to suck the fun out of everything. Clearly, we should bring in pets only if they are well behaved, don’t chew the office furniture and don’t disrupt the normal flow of work. But there are now other hurdles to jump over. Are the pets insured, clean, parasite-free and vaccinated? Does having dogs in the office invalidate a company’s liability insurance and compromise its fire-safety certificates? Surely, bringing your pet to work should be encouraged by all, including the insurance industry? I doubt John Adams did a risk assessment when he put his alligator in the White House bath tub.
James Timpson is chief executive of Timpson Group
