When you migrate from one socioeconomic status to another, you spot subtle signs of class struggle everywhere. Perhaps nowhere more so than on dog walks. Going up the park with my idiotic cockapoo, Cookie, is supposed to be relaxing. But since middle-class people started getting into dogs (it all took off in lockdown), it has just become irritating. I live in a posh area, where most people own dogs for the same reason they own Volvos or BMWs: it’s a lifestyle accoutrement. They have introduced a load of pointless codes of conduct and, in the process, sucked the joy out of it.
When I was a kid, we owned a mongrel called Bella. She was bought on a whim one day because we happened to be passing Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Bella was thick as shit, scared of everything, badly behaved and totally, utterly lovable.
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We had to leave her on her own in the daytime while we were at school and work, which wasn’t ideal. Sometimes, when she was whining and scratching at the front door, my brothers and I would let her out to play in the street on her own. Again, not ideal – especially as we lived perched right on the edge of the A4, one of London’s busiest arteries. To be fair, she never once got run over. But she did once wind up in a ‘romantic tryst’ with an Afghan hound from the flats up the road, resulting in a litter of puppies a few months later.
Bella shat and pissed in the house sometimes. She was a bit blind and would often run full-pelt into the park railings. We would feed her bits and bobs from the dinner table: crisps, chips, sweeties, the odd sausage. At the park, she would socialise with other council house dogs, most of whom were similarly daft. Nobody picked up shit in little bags back then, which in retrospect was disgusting, but we were always careful to usher her off the pavement to do her business. We would play fight with her, cuddle her in front of the telly, and sometimes let her drift off to sleep in our beds if there was a thunderstorm and she was scared. We loved her, she loved us, our relationship was not perfect but ultimately, she lived a pretty happy life.
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Things are different for dogs in 2025. The problem is, my wife (who grew up middle class) seems convinced that our dog Cookie will die if I give her a salt and vinegar crisp or let her off the lead anywhere within a kilometre of a moving vehicle. Her relatives visit our home and make sniffy remarks about our failure to train Cookie. I haven’t got time to train a dog. It’s just a dog: why must it be forced to conform? Part of the appeal of dogs is that they are silly and a bit anarchic.
