‘No dog of mine will sleep on my bed,’ I swore, before Dennis came along. People who allowed dogs on their beds were feeble, I believed, not far removed from the sort of parent you overhear in restaurants saying: ‘Persephone, if you do that again Daddy’s going to get jolly cross.’ I’d be more disciplined. My dog would sleep in the kitchen, like any self-respecting normal dog.

Dennis arrived, just ten weeks old, and on his first night was duly shut in the secondhand crate I’d bought on Facebook Marketplace for £20, from a woman who owned a mastiff called Hades. This crate was in my kitchen.

Might my single status and attitude towards dogs on beds be somehow correlated, I hear you muse

I went to bed and tried to ignore the pitiful mewling. Guess how long I lasted? Twenty minutes, if that, whereupon I caved and lugged the crate to my bedroom. Over the past two years, Dennis has since graduated from the crate to a dog bed in my room, to my bed, where he now lies every night, on his back, legs akimbo, like a weary Casanova after a long day at the coalface.

It’s companionable, I tell people defensively. I’m single and I like the bulk of a small terrier against my leg at night. Better Dennis than the bulk of certain ex-boyfriends. He’s not under the duvet. That’s my hard line (unlike my friend Hannah, who allows her whippet under the cover, between her and her other half). But he’s up there all the same, his bottom sometimes perilously close to the pillows, settling down when I turn off the bedside light with a contented sigh. There isn’t much fidgeting, unless he hears a fox in the garden but, again, I’d take the occasional growl over the Panzer-like rumbling of a middle-aged man.

Might my single status and attitude towards dogs on beds be somehow correlated, I hear you muse. Well, I’ve recently read the howlingly funny and meticulously researched forthcoming biography of Barbara Cartland, The Great Dictator by Matthew Sweet, and was delighted to learn that Barbs allowed her Pekes on the bed (although the labradors had to stay downstairs). And it didn’t seem to do her love life any harm, did it? Or her prodigious output, for that matter.

Admittedly, there was one dicey moment when Dennis was small and a new flame came to stay for the weekend, and he had to be carted out of the bedroom for a spell (Dennis, not the flame). Some people may be able to perform while their dog watches on, but that seems a red flag to me. Fortunately, most dating apps now allow their users to indicate if they have a pet by adding a twee little pawprint to their profile, so one can pick and choose between those unlikely to fuss about a terrier on the bed and those who view it as an arrestable offence.

There are plenty of the latter around. People who shriek about hygiene and claim it’s deeply unsanitary for dogs to be allowed on beds or even just upstairs – but how many of these people, I wonder, take their phones to the lavatory with them? I don’t see that dogs are so much worse. Nearly half of all Brits allow their pets to sleep on their beds, according to one of those deeply scientific surveys that comes out on such matters from time to time, and our immune systems are boosted accordingly.

It only occasionally presents a problem when I go to stay with someone. Because while Dennis is allowed to roam where he likes at home and almost no piece of furniture is off-limits (except, perhaps, the kitchen table), even I understand that other people may have different rules in their houses. My mother often forlornly recounts the tale of going to stay with friends in Oxfordshire for a straightforward shooting weekend one January, when the guests’ dogs were expected to sleep outside in their respective cars.

That was some decades ago, in the days when dogs weren’t as mollycoddled as now. These days, I pack a blanket to protect my host’s bedding from pawprints, or I have a quiet word with Dennis beforehand and tell him that, on this occasion, just for a night or so, he’ll have to play Cinderella and doss down in the kitchen.

On the other hand, I feel quite differently about shared spaces such as restaurants or public transport. Not so long ago, in an Italian on the Fulham Road, I watched a man and his small dog share a plate of tagliata. Both were sitting on the plush banquette. What if its next occupant had an allergy?

Ditto seats on the train or Tube. A few weeks ago, I hopped on the Victoria line, longing to sit down after a difficult day, and came up against a brindle-coloured mutt of some sort sitting happily on a priority seat beside its owner. I often ask people to remove their bags in such instances – ‘Please can I sit down?’ in brisk Mary Poppins mode. Yet I hesitated over the dog. I disapproved but felt that as a doggie sort I couldn’t kick up a fuss. Perhaps I should have asked for the chap’s number.