I recently went on a walk with a friend and was looking forward to a long-awaited catch-up – until I saw she had brought her dog. “Oh, Trixxie gets so lonely on her own,” she cooed defensively before we had even passed the park gates.
For the next couple of hours, my friend would incessantly break our conversation with shouts of, “Come on, good girl, catch!” as she lobbed a slobbery, smelly ball through the air.
“It is not my job to put up with your mutt,” I wanted to say, as she handed me her steaming poo bag while she rummaged around for doggie treats in her bag. I found it all so irritating – and borderline rude. I haven’t spoken to her since.
What is going on? As I reach my mid-sixties, all of a sudden my friendships now contain a side order of smelly pooch. Not only do they bring their four-legged pals everywhere with them, supposedly in case of separation anxiety, but they seem to think their animals are more important than me.
Whether it is an antidote to the loneliness of empty nest syndrome, the fallout of a mid-life divorce – or just a yearning for a loving creature that doesn’t answer back or steal the remote – hit post mid-life and everyone is going canine crazy.
