Have you read your copy of Dogue, yet? It’s become an annual project: Vogue’s dog issue. Instead of hungry, cross models in elaborate costumes and articles about the sartorial importance of the earlobe, it’s all dogs. A dog on the cover and dog ‘interviews’ alongside fashionable people talking about their dogs.
Fittingly, the Dogue competition winner and cover star does look quite hungry. He’s a thin dog (of course) called Sir Spud who appears to be an Ibizan hound. Very Dogue, though, to have an Ibizan dog on the cover. Sir Spud was apparently named by Catholic nuns, would be voiced by Ian McKellen in a film about his life, is a Cancer ‘through and through’ and likes cashew nuts.
Dogs mustn’t be left alone for too long and should wear coats if it looks like rain
Elsewhere in the issue, the world’s biggest pop star, Bad Bunny, reveals that his four-year-old beagle, Sansa, likes bananas. Lena Dunham says her hairless dog Ingrid apparently likes to roll in fox poo ‘to the point where we have to wash deep inside her ears’, and Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown solemnly declares that her poodle Winnie’s best quality is her mastery of English: ‘She fully understands sentences.’
Dogue comes just a few weeks after Country Life published its own dog issue. ‘Hang on, isn’t every issue of Country Life a dog issue?’ my friend Joe remarked in the pub when I raised the topic of magazines becoming increasingly dog-focused. Yes, Country Life often has rare breeds on its covers and the Queen’s terriers, Bluebell and Beth, have appeared on the ‘girls in pearls’ page wearing pearls around their furry necks. But this was its annual dog special, featuring Peggy the miniature bull terrier on its cover (‘Britain’s naughtiest dog’) and doggy articles including an etiquette guide and a piece examining the role of dogs in art. Meanwhile, I have it on good authority that Tatler is considering throwing a Pet Gala next May, shortly after the Met Gala takes place in New York.
Now look, I say this with the greatest admiration and love for dogs, but have we, maybe, lost the plot when it comes to our four-legged pals? As I type, Dennis is lying on his back on the kitchen sofa, legs akimbo. It isn’t an elegant pose. It’s rather rude, actually; Casanova, weary after a long session. But I could gaze at him for hours. When he wakes, he will shuffle off to his toy basket and pick out one of 43 items, then carry it hopefully over to me to play. I will almost certainly abandon my laptop and comply. Later, for supper, he will enjoy beef fillet leftover from a dinner party, along with a squirt of ‘Scottish salmon oil’ made for dogs and a probiotic chew after I fell for an advert on Instagram that promised to balance his yeast levels. In short, I’ve lost the plot too. But do we collectively need to rein it in a bit?
I’m reading Tony Parsons’s forthcoming wonderful memoir, Man & Dog, about his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Stan. In an early chapter, he writes about growing up near Romford with a mongrel called Laddie. ‘It was another time then and dogs wandered around Harold Hill as free as cats.’ Laddie didn’t have a lead, or a collar. Parsons says he cannot ever recollect carrying a poo bag or visiting the vet for vaccinations. The pair roamed the streets together like Just William and Jumble: ‘For both the children and the dogs, it was a life off lead.’
It sounds similar to my mother’s recollections of growing up in rural Kent, along with several terriers. (A tumult of terriers? A phalanx? A terror? There were always a few knocking around, at any rate.) My grandmother would simply open the door in the morning, the terriers would hurtle out and not necessarily be seen again until tea time.
Today, dogs are treated like children being groomed for Oxbridge. They must wear special harnesses and be fed a constant supply of treats, ideally grain free. Dogs should not be shouted at or have their noses rubbed in their business if they do it inside (this is now considered abuse by some in the dog world). They mustn’t be left alone for too long and should wear coats if it looks like rain. An army of people have sprung up offering to help those of us deranged enough to pay them: dog behaviourists, dog nutritionists, dog osteopaths, dog acupuncturists, holistic dog therapists, dog photographers and so on. One friend has recently put her dog on anti-anxiety medicine to try and solve her separation anxiety (the dog is, technically, the one that’s anxious, although my friend has become quite weary with the ordeal).
Now, because so many of us have gone bonkers, publications are doing the same. Dog magazines already exist (you haven’t come across Your Dog or Dogs Today?), but the wily creatures seem to be infiltrating more mainstream titles. How long can it be before The Spectator goes the same way? Charles Moore on the spiritual importance of dogs, Tim Shipman interviews Axel, the Prime Minister’s bichon-poo, and Olivia Potts offers healthy dog food you can cook at home. And they say cats are the clever ones.
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