Along with chickenpox and having to write thank-you letters for hand-knitted mittens you never wanted, being given a pet then finding it stiff one morning is a childhood rite of passage.
In my case it was a hamster called Billy, but change the name and species and it'll be a common enough story for most readers.
Given all that, it seems bizarre that any grown man would come back for more pet-shaped disappointment. But many do and for a disturbing number of them their pets are little more or less than fashion accessories (I include those single men whose only reason for owning a pooch is to meet those single women whose only reason for having a pooch is to meet single men).
Talking of pooches, it's safe to say we use the phrase "a man's best friend" for a reason and that the majority of pet-owning men own dogs. The poster boy in this camp is Mickey Rourke, whose chihuahua Loki died in Rourke's arms at 5am on February 17, 2009 - we know because the actor issued a press statement shortly afterwards. Meanwhile the fashion website Mr Porter recently ran a feature called Man & Dog which allowed readers to meet hip New Yorkers and their dogs, then "shop the look", as the saying goes. Sadly this offer didn't extend to Ozzy, the mongrel owned by one Noah Neiman whose greatest pleasure is to bound up and down the stairs in Mr Neiman's apartment block. I'm sure the neighbours would have loved the opportunity to have Ozzy parcelled up and FedExed somewhere at the click of a mouse. Patagonia, perhaps?
But, proving the point about men and dogs and dating, Mr Neiman had this to say: "Ozzy loves women. He walks with this confident strut and people gravitate towards him." I won't psychoanalyse that except to say that Mr Neiman is a fitness trainer who lives with a model and works at a place called Barry's Bootcamp.
But the pet-as-ultimate-fashion-accessory thing isn't all about dogs so we should stop to consider Choupette, Karl Lagerfeld's pampered pussy. It has its own custom Louis Vuitton luggage and, according to one broadsheet, "fur the colour of baked Alaska and eyes of such a clear shade of sapphire blue that they have inspired a Chanel collection and a range of cosmetics".
Take a peek at Buzzfeed's 31 Absurd Pictures Of Men With Their Pets, meanwhile, and you'll see that, while there are a few canines, most of the images show men with cats (though my favourite is the goth who has a tarantula the size of a pain-au-raisin crawling across his forehead. Why haven't Channel Five made a documentary about him yet?).
But perhaps owning a dog is about more than just fashion and meeting models. Some men get one so they can take selfies as their pooches poo in the background. I didn't even know this was A Thing until I found a Tumblr page called Dog****selfie. There's nothing to say if the sitters and their squatters cleaned up after themselves - but something tells me they didn't. If only Louis Vuitton did poop sacks …
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