Have we gone barking mad?

These days we give our dogs facials and freshly cooked food, and treat them as if they were our babies. Charlotte Cripps ventures into the peculiar world of excessive dog parenting

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I’m just not good enough for my dog. I don’t cuddle him enough. He’s bored. He doesn’t get walked enough. Should he be on a raw food diet? Taking supplements? Wearing a quilted Barbour jacket? God knows. It’s a minefield.

I worry he’s not getting enough “me” time. And why do all the other golden retrievers look so silky and well-groomed on Instagram, when Muggles looks like a sheep that got stuck in a hedgerow? I’ve failed him – my darling dog, to whom I once sung lullabies as a puppy, and who slept with me every night in my bed with his paw on my arm – until I had my children, Lola, now eight, and Liberty, six. It eats away at me – daily.

I’m suffering from “dog guilt”, which, I’ve discovered, is as common as “mum guilt”. It’s a condition that screams we’ve not done enough, or not done things right, for our dogs. And the reason, it seems, that I suffer from it to such a ridiculous degree is because I apparently fall into what has been classed as the “dog parent”, one of three categories all dog owners fall into – according to scientists at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that “dog parents”, who make up 54 per cent of dog owners, regard their dog as a pseudo-child with whom they can have a close, human-like bond.

This is in contrast to other dog owners, whose relationship with their pet is a little more practical. The “friendly colleague” owners treat their dog like a co-worker and security guard, while the “companion” owner is content for their dog to sit at their feet while they sip tea at home – in short, they see their pet’s role as merely to keep them company.