I'm probably going to lose some friends over this, but I don't think dogs should be allowed inside the house.
People live inside. Dogs, like the rest of the animals, should live outside. It's the natural order of things.
But before anyone declares me a heretic and starts chucking rocks at my windows, allow me to make my case.
First, I'm talking about pets here and I use the term deliberately. For reasons that I hope would be obvious, I'm not referring to service animals, like guide dogs for example, who have a clear imperative to go where they are needed.
Secondly, I readily accept that I'm in the minority with this no-pets-in-the-house opinion. About 69 per cent of Australian households have at least one pet, according to some recent data, and there's a decent amount of research that suggests that "interspecies parenting" has become more prevalent over the last several years.
And if that wasn't enough, there's also my loving partner (who I hope won't leave me after reading this), my roommate, my best and oldest friend, my in-laws and their best-boy Otis (who I adore), probably my mum, everyone else I know, and literally every journalist in the newsroom (my boss included) telling me I'm a monster as I write this.
The minority, I accept, I am very firmly in. But hear me out anyway.
I'll say right off the bat that I would never disparage anyone the meaningful relationship they have with their pets.
I grew up with a red cattle dog who was my best non-human friend in the world. I understood him and he understood me in the unspoken way that pets do. He saw me through the pointy end of my high school years, the most challenging parts of university, and was waiting for me by the back door after countless long and hard days at work.
The day he died, I found myself thinking about the day that he came home with me as a puppy, and sat on my feet while I carefully cut each soft puppy biscuit in half for his dinner because they were too big for him whole. He was my boy. He loved me unconditionally, and I genuinely loved him.
And he lived outside where he belonged all his life.
I am, of course, in no way suggesting that our pets don't deserve or need care and compassion. Pets bring a special meaning to our lives and they deserve every ounce of respect, care and dignity that we would afford to anyone. But they don't belong in the house.
Over the past few years, it feels like our traditionally human spaces have been increasingly co-opted by so-called fur-babies. And as the Herald's self-appointed resident Old Man this week, I reckon this cloud needs a good yelling at.
One of the reasons for why pets seem to be moving indoors in the rise of interspecies families seems to be the changing ideas of what a family is.
The rate of child birth in Australia, for example, has more than halved since 1950, and the rate of marriage has been steadily declining since the late 1960s as well. Conversely, the number of pets in the country has grown from around 17.8 million in 1994, according to Bureau of Statistics data, to more than 28 million according to a national survey by Animal Medicines Australia in 2022.
A 2018 paper published in the journal Humanity & Society argued that pets have come to occupy a "social place" in our homes and that the form that modern families and households take tend to influence how we think about our pet and their standing in the family.
Families in that same study who had pets and small human children tended to emphasise the difference between "parenting" children and animals, whereas families that were childless or child-free tended to speak about their pets using what researchers called "traditional parenting language".
The paper concluded that just as the ways in which families can choose to parent have become more diverse - with varied pathways to parenthood like adoption and reproductive technology - pet parenting was another way that people engage in parenthood.
And when you look at it like that, it's probably unsurprising that your dog is now allowed to come inside the pub more often, or - as Virgin announced last week - to travel with you onboard the plane as a passenger instead of in the freight locker. The numbers don't lie and the definition of family undeniably now includes pets.
"Pets are family," RMIT animal companionship researcher Melissa Laing said in a statement following the airline's announcement, "Many people consider themselves to be 'pet parents', and have a bond with their animal companions that is every bit as meaningful and complex as those they have with other humans. This is particularly the case for people who are socially isolated.
"Enabling companion animals to travel on flights is a positive development for the human-animal bond and interspecies families in Australia, as it communicates to people that their relationship with their pets is important.
"We can take our pets to some public spaces like outdoor cafes, on public transport and to short stay accommodation, so it's not too much to expect to take your animal on a flight with the rest of the family."
Where things get dicy, however, to my admittedly minority thinking, is when we start talking about pets as people when they very clearly are not.
The relationship between humans and dogs alone is storied, and dates back thousands of years. Dogs were the earliest domesticated animal, a process that started somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago as we began employing them for hunting, guarding, and companionship.
Dogs are truly incredible creatures that can read our facial cues, respond to our voice, and even outperform primates in following a human's gaze in object choice tasks. Dogs are great. But they're not people. And thinking of them as people can have serious implications for their health and ours.
A 2021 research paper concluded that anthropomorphism - or our human tendency to think of non-human animals in human terms - was a growing trend and one that had potentially dangerous consequences.
Feeding dogs foods that are inconsistent with their natural diet, dressing them in clothes that restricts the way their bodies deal with heat, impeding their movement by carrying them in bags, applying cosmetics, and misunderstanding their emotional responses were just a few examples researchers found to be dangerous for our pets' physical, mental and emotional health.
"People must understand that although pets seem to have certain similarities to human characteristics, they are not human. They must also recognise that companion animals have distinct biological needs that must be satisfied which differ by species, breed, age (and) physiological condition," researchers wrote.
While there is evidence to suggest that measured anthropomorphism can help us be more empathetic towards animals, researchers argued "problems may arise when human behaviour becomes incompatible with the animal's needs and, consequently, jeopardises its welfare."
I have been lucky enough to have grown up surrounded by loved, respected and cared-for animals, all of whom are living or lived long and healthy lives. I grew up in a rural area where working dogs, in particular, were prized as much as people for the jobs they did. But they lived outside because their needs were necessarily different than mine.
In modern times, in a different city, that view seems quaint and, undoubtedly to the majority of whoever is still reading this, outrageous bordering on heretical. In a city, it's probably unreasonable for a pet to live outside safely, and that should be a serious consideration for any pet owner.
Pet ownership is, after all, a serious responsibility, and keeping our pets safe and healthy is surely something we can all agree on.
