“I’m so sorry for the piss in your turn-ups…” is actually a good icebreaker. I have trouble talking to humans, I don’t know what they’re thinking, but when your dog has just urinated up their leg, you are forced to communicate with them. And while the bit of fresh air and exercise is good, the real anti-depression work is done with the apologising. As I fell into financial and career difficulties, followed by a Defcon One psychological meltdown, the damn dog became a priceless route out of myself and into contact with others. As a dog bought during Covid to allay the boredom of lockdown, it quickly became apparent that his use for our family was as a comfort blanket with legs. Yet the little dickhead has undoubtedly helped me out of depression. Like he knows we’re hanging out together but when he runs off to hump a picnicker’s knapsack, he seems to take my yells as encouragement, as if I’m a hooting crew member and he’s a hairy Mizzy. When I take him out for a walk, he seems to think we have more of a peer-to-peer relationship, than a master-hound one. He stinks and won’t leave me alone and doesn’t understand most of what I want from him.
Small, scruffy, fox-like - a Portuguese Podengo - he’s cute but annoying. To the casual observer, which I was until a couple of years ago, London dogs are unlikely lifesavers: they either seem to be spoilt cockapoos called Milo practically breastfed by vaping kidult owners, or American XL Bully dogs called Thanos who terrorise communities. James Middleton, Princess Kate’s brother and an ambassador for the Pets As Therapy charity, recently said his dogs were the reason he managed to escape his “cancer of the mind” and they basically saved his life. In the US, psychiatrists fulfill this function here we have pets. Stress-filled, high-functioning, lonely, egomaniacs - that is, city-dwellers - on both sides of the Atlantic require safety valves. New Yorkers have shrinks, Londoners have dogs.
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