A DOG'S LIFE●Graeme Hall
Should I take my dog on holiday
— or put him in kennels?
I
recently booked a week
away at a cottage in the
Lake District and have
been wandering about
singing “We’re all going on
a summer holiday” to
myself ever since. The
“all” in question includes
our three dogs — no
surprise there.
These days it’s quite easy
to find dog-friendly
accommodation (pubs, cafés
and other attractions too), but
it wasn’t always the way.Certainly, when I was a boy,
holidaying with my parents
in caravan sites and holiday
camps around the country in
the late 1960s and early 1970s,
very few dogs came away with
their owners.
Perhaps the main reason is
there simply weren’t so many
dogs around back then. The size
of the pet population has
increased hugely in the past 50
years, at a far faster rate than the
human population. In 1965
there were fewer than fivemillion dogs in the UK; now
there are more than 12 million.
About three million dogs were
homed during 2020 and 2021
alone — and we all know what
triggered that. No wonder
holidaying with pets has
become such a thing. Google
searches in the UK for “dog
friendly ...” have increased
tenfold since 2004.
When I was a lad (I’m
beginning to sound more like
my dad every day), the majority
of dogs were sent off to the local40 • The Sunday Times Magazine