Just got a puppy? Here’s what a terrier called Arthur taught me about love | Hadley Freeman

Owning a pet is a long-term relationship, and things change. But the love endures

I left having children pretty much as late as it was biologically possible to do, and I quickly grew to recognise, if not entirely understand, a certain look - let's say, boredom mixed with condescension topped off with wry amusement - sported by my friends, who had their children at far more sensible ages, when I would go on and on (and on) to them about the miracle-slash-insanity of raising babies. No one before me had ever noticed how crazy all this parenting stuff was, I believed, while looking uncomprehendingly at the smirks on my friends' faces as their kids did their GCSEs. Well, I comprehend them now. Because this is how I feel when people go on and on (and on) about the new dogs that they got during lockdown.

More than 3.2 million people in the UK got a pet during lockdown, and they have been especially popular among the under-35s. This is generally reported in a tone of either shock (what are those crazy kids doing, tying themselves down to a pet so early!) or scorn (silly snowflakes, they can't handle a dog!). But I get it. I took my time about having kids, but I was precocious about dog ownership, having decided at the age of 31 that what was missing from carefree single life in Manhattan was an extremely high-maintenance terrier, who I could never leave alone in my tiny apartment because he would literally eat it. I once came home from breakfast in my local diner to find that he had eaten half my sofa, even though the sofa was 6ft long and my dog was the size of a jacket potato. And because I was so derangedly in love with him, I found this adorable, and proceeded to bring him with me everywhere. Obviously you don't mind," I'd say, swanning into friends' apartments with my yapping terrier, and they looked at me as if I'd come in with a rat I'd found on the subway.