We’ve all had a few days to digest the election results and I think we can all agree on who the winners were – dogs.
Dogs, by a landslide.
The posting of pictures of our four-legged loved ones outside polling stations has become as much of an election norm as those tiny pencils you use to draw a cross by the name of your chosen candidate on the ballot paper.
I am happy to confirm I was an early adopter of the trend and my photos with my own dogs go back several prime ministers.
Gracie and Lola – our two cocker spaniels – sit dutifully outside the village hall while my husband takes pictures of us. I honestly think they have done it so often that they know the drill.
On election day itself the media isn’t allowed to discuss anything political so #dogsatpollingstations images are not only divine to look at, they fill a reporting gap for us journalists.
It is yet another reason to love dogs – and this year they were joined online by cats, a tortoise and – at one polling station in Dorset – a snake. And fair play to all those other animals, but they just aren’t dogs.
I can tell when someone doesn’t understand why we love our dogs so much. I will be in the park with Gracie and Lola and will end up chatting to someone who will say “it’s like they are a member of the family” and at that point I have to politely correct them. There’s no “like” about it – they are every bit members of our family, thank you. Why do you think I always sign their names on my Christmas cards along with my sons’?
I was fortunate to grow up in a family where we always had dogs and I have vivid memories of my late and much-missed stepdad out in the garden in all weathers taking our two Dalmatians and our spaniel Molly for their late night trot round the garden. I can only imagine what he would have said if someone had suggested they were “like” a member of the family.
The actor and comedian Bill Murray once said that he is suspicious of people who don’t like dogs, but he always trusts a dog when it doesn’t like a person. I agree with him, and I can see too why Ricky Gervais says dogs are “better people than people”.
To start with, dogs make you happier. Gracie and Lola make me smile every single day without exception. Even when I come home late at night after a Newsnight shift and it’s raining and I’m still playing over an interview in my mind, they are overjoyed to see me. Even if they just wagged their tails I’d be happy – but no, they want to welcome me home by bringing me a “present” because that’s how thoughtful they are, even if that gift is a sock from the wash basket, or a squeaky dog toy cheeseburger. I know it comes from the heart. There are few things in my day more pleasurable than sitting down on the floor in my quiet kitchen at half past midnight with a cup of tea and a dog either side of me.
But of course our public love affair with dogs is only one side of the story. We pride ourselves as a country that, as the cliché goes, is a “nation of animal lovers”.
An extra 3.2 million pets were brought into British households during the pandemic. They were seen – rightly – as being a cure for “lockdown loneliness” but for some, the “pandemic puppy” didn’t work out and, post-Covid, there was a spike in pets being abandoned.
It’s still going on now.
The RSPCA says that last year across England and Wales they received reports of 16,000 abandoned dogs, and a rescue centre in Carmarthenshire was quoted by the BBC as “bursting at the seams” after they took in 400 dogs in June alone.
Add to that the cost of living crisis and the rise of unscrupulous breeders and the “nation of animal lovers” tag starts to look a bit thin.
Obviously I’m not suggesting that the new PM should be thinking of appointing a “Minister for Dogs” – he has enough on his plate as it is, but perhaps our four-legged friends should have a basket underneath the top table as those statistics are appalling.
Perhaps we need to get the message out that a dog is not just for polling day, or an election period, or even the term of a parliament, but for life. I think we can all vote for that.
Victoria Derbyshire is a journalist, broadcaster and host of BBC Newsnight and Ukrainecast