I have a friend, let’s call her Julie, who lives nearby and sometimes we stroll around the local park together. But it always takes quite a long time, a lap of the park with Julie, because we have to stop and talk to every dog we see. At the approach of a spaniel or an elderly terrier, or even something menacing that could have been in the news last week for having a small child’s arm off, Julie stops, bends over and puts on her dog voice. “Whosagoodboythen? Yes, whosagoodboy?”
I used to think, every dog? Every one? That one barely looks like a dog. It looks like a gerbil. And yet there we would stand for several minutes while Julie discussed the dog — favourite toy, snack of choice, bowel movements — with its owner.
I am afraid to say, I have recently become one of those people. At the age of 39, it is as if my biological clock has gone off not for babies but for dogs, and I now also walk around my local park making peculiar noises. Just last night, taking advantage of the lighter evenings, I gurgled at a chestnut-coloured poodle puppy. The day before, it was a bouncy retriever. The day before that, an arthritic West Highland terrier waddling slowly behind its owner. If you scrolled through my recent photos, you would think I had become some sort of ankle pervert because I keep trying to take surreptitious snaps of other people’s dogs to send to my other half.
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I have been dithering over children for nearly a decade. Do I want them? Do I not want them? Four years ago, during the first year of Covid, I froze my eggs to hold off making that decision. Freezing your eggs is not a guarantee of a baby, but it gave me breathing space. Park that question for now; think about it when I meet someone. I briefly entertained the idea of solo motherhood and spent some time loitering on Danish sperm bank websites, but eventually discounted that on the basis I didn’t want a baby enough to do it by myself. Friends who have gone down that route always knew they wanted a child. That has never been me.
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I feel like I have been holding off making the decision for as long as I can and now I am wondering whether that is not a decision in itself. Particularly because I have met someone I am crazy about, Paul, but I still don’t feel the impulse to have children with him. So here is a radical idea: perhaps I do not need to have a baby simply because that is what most people do. I could just… get a dog.
People who refer to their dogs as their child substitutes give me the ick, but it is a thing. One fiftysomething friend who got a labradoodle when her children went to university says she misses the dog more than her husband when the dog isn’t there. Beano, my mother’s beloved terrier, is essentially my dim youngest sibling. I increasingly walk past women carting their dogs in slings or backpacks. In the park, I often see an immaculate woman, probably in her seventies, pushing along an old pug in what looks like a buggy. Some men post pictures of themselves on dating apps with borrowed babies — their nephew or a godchild — but I reckon more post snaps with dogs as bait in the belief it makes them seem sensitive and caring.
As the dog population has grown, so the birth rate has plunged because fewer and fewer of us are having babies, but then again, doggie daycare does not cost as much as childcare. Puppy training is easier to arrange than getting your child into a decent local school. Dogs will not get addicted to their phones and start watching violent porn (will they?). I could give the next 10 or 15 years of my life to a nice dog and he or she will always be grateful, or I could give birth to something that demands an allowance for several years and rudely flounces off as soon as it is independent. You don’t get to choose what your baby looks like either, whereas now, while I walk around the park, I think, big or small? Smooth or shaggy? One that does manageable poos, ideally, which is another thing that seems less predictable with a child.
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I do fear becoming one of those people who breaks off conversations with friends to point out something hilarious their dog is doing. Will I post endless photos of it online because I believe it is better than all other dogs? I am insistent that it will not sleep on my bed, but how long will that last?
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It helps that Paul is on the same page as me regarding dogs in general and being in or on the bed. (Who are those weirdos who allow them under the duvet?) We have been seeing one another for only six months and some might raise an eyebrow and ask whether it is too soon for dogs to act as surrogate babies, but I would counter that we were both thinking about getting dogs before we met. Promise. My recent suggestion, made slightly jokingly, that we get puppies from the same litter has been rejected on the basis that it would make us insufferable and presumably we would then be at risk of becoming the couple who refer to their dogs as their babies. Also, puppies from the same litter might try and shag one another when they get older, warned a friend.
The trouble is, getting a dog feels almost embarrassing now. Knee-jerk. As clichéd as posting a baby scan online. The dog population of Britain has reportedly increased more than 20 per cent since the pandemic, when everyone decided the ideal way to cope with the most peculiar situation most of us had ever known was to buy a small, comforting creature and figure out the training afterwards.
Much has been written about the dog boom and the consequent problems — a rise in abandonment, overwhelmed rescue centres, soaring prices, unscrupulous puppy farmers, behavioural issues and so on. Some days, it feels as if this country has lost its way not only politically and economically, but doggily too, since they have become such a controversial topic. We worship them, we demonise them, we humanise them with their own Instagram accounts and little raincoats, we judge others for their choices about them. So now I want to get one, but where the heck do I start?
Although I am cooing over dogs in the park like others do while bending over a buggy, I do not plan on being a silly or overly sentimental owner.
My mother is a Parson Russell terrier woman. Trumpet was her first Parson, found in a Kent rescue centre. Beano is the current Parson and the reason I am nervous about my foray into the dog world. I love him, to be clear (and because my mother is reading this), but his purchase was not straightforward. Getting pregnant and giving my mother a grandchild might have been easier.
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In 2019, Trumpet was getting on a bit. My sister and I knew we needed to find if not a replacement exactly, then a successor. Rosie did her research and facetimed a Mancunian breeder she found on the website Pets4Homes to check the puppy litter was still with its mother (and had not already been removed, which would suggest a puppy farm).
We paid a £100 deposit and set off for the north a few weeks later, where we found Carol, the breeder, having a fag in the street. She ushered us into a depressing, unfurnished house that smelt of damp, possibly because it had a lone fish tank in one corner. Carol disappeared into a back room and returned with the puppy and the same fag in her mouth. She thrust her bank details under my nose and I transferred the outstanding balance before muttering to my sister that we needed to get out of there.
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We hurried to my car as if a hostage handover had just taken place and I spun it around, wheels practically screeching, only for Carol to flag us down and lean through the window.
“Money’s not in,” she growled.
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There followed an exciting few moments while she loitered in front of my car and I called my bank to check it had gone through (it had).
“It’s a scam,” I muttered.
“We should have brought cash,” Mum said faintly from the back, clutching her new puppy.
In the end, the money landed (phew) and we were allowed to go, but the whole experience put me off most websites flogging puppies. With hindsight, Beano’s breeder possibly wasn’t that responsible, so how do you find a good one? Do you have to go via the Kennel Club? A Sloaney man once boasted to me that his labrador was descended from the same line as the Duke of Buccleuch’s, but I don’t want an aristocratic dog. Just one that hasn’t been so inbred that it can’t breathe properly.
Having considered various types of terrier, I am now longing for a Westie. But is setting one’s heart on a particular breed too narrow-minded? Does wanting a Westie make me as bad as those people who are now buying Bernedoodles for £5,000 because they are fashionable?
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The popular hashtag is #adoptdontshop. That’s what people often chant nowadays at those who reveal they’re thinking about getting a dog. You should adopt one of the many dogs that need a new home, in other words, and not simply buy a puppy because you think it looks cute. Although curiously, nobody says this to couples trying for a baby, do they? “You really should adopt, you know. There are plenty out there looking for homes.”
Paul, who works in the charity sector and is therefore more charitable than me, is up for adopting. Or at least rehoming. I am not averse to the idea. Rescues, say those with experience, can be especially grateful, adoring dogs. My friend India has a corgi-shaped rescue called John, who came from Corfu via a lovely posh woman called Carole Langton. She runs the charity Care, which specialises in bringing Corfiot rescues to the UK where they often end up in Notting Hill or the Cotswolds. Very smart to have a Care rescue.
I interviewed the model David Gandy once and he offered to give me a tour of Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, for which he is an ambassador, so maybe I should give him a ring (I have not mentioned this idea to Paul).
Cor, what a conundrum. Before any of this, however, I need to get my fence fixed, so whoever I end up with can’t chase the foxes from the den at the back of my garden through the streets of Crystal Palace. And while they have been quite coy about mentioning it, I imagine my friends will then plan a surprise puppy shower. Given the number of baby showers I have been to, it’s only fair.
