Bringing your dog to the pub is barking mad

There was a time when you could go to the pub in England to have a drink, catch up with friends and unwind after a day’s work. But nowadays no trip to the local is complete without the obligatory dog being present (sometimes dogs plural).

Picture the scene — it’s Friday night in a cosy little pub in a gorgeous village on the Cornish coast, with the wind swirling outside and not a care inside.

I’d driven for more than four hours from my home in Oxfordshire to run a marathon the next morning, and all I wanted was a quiet soft drink and a bit of grub before bed. Not much to ask, really. And it was going so, so well.

Until, that is, four separate groups of people arrived... with their four dogs, their leads and their barking. Big ones, small ones, yappy ones, timid ones.

Pubs have always hummed to the sound of conversation, but lately it’s the dogs doing most of the talking.

Every slice of pizza I cut was followed to my mouth by multiple sets of doggie eyeballs, all wishing I’d drop a bit or just relent and feed them the lot.

Their owners chatted away, completely oblivious as to whether anyone in the pub was allergic to dogs or worse still, scared of them. I’m neither, but I didn’t want to be wedged in by four mollycoddled mutts in a restaurant where I was eating, and trying to relax.

Why can’t they leave their dogs at home when they go out? And where do we draw the line? If I had a pet pig, would I expect everyone in the pub to just go along with his smelly presence?

English people have always loved their dogs, but this fetish for bringing them along as drinking buddies is new.

There was a time when you could go to the pub in England to have a drink, catch up with friends and unwind after a day’s work. But nowadays no trip to the local is complete without the obligatory dog being present (sometimes dogs plural). I can’t actually remember the last time I went into a pub in England and didn’t see dogs.

They have become the ultimate accessory and are taken along with their owners due to a curious mix of laziness and entitlement. 

This has really become a problem since covid, when the WFHers who didn’t have kids got puppies to ease their loneliness during lockdown. Those perfect little dogs are now much bigger and clearly can’t be left at home because their owners’ anxiety has transferred to them and they’ll wreck the place.

And perhaps they should have thought before spending a grand on that cute Rhodesian Ridgeback pup that’s now bigger than they are.

There is a campaign ongoing by some pub landlords to ban Labour politicians from their premises over the rise in business rates that all pubs have to pay. I’d happily put in place a ban on all dogs in pubs, or better still, a tax on dog owners who try to take their pets into bars.

Much like in Ireland, the hospitality sector in the UK is really struggling. Landlords are loath to turn anyone away, and this is why dog owners get away with their arrogance. It’s not that bar owners are scared to tackle the canine problem in the room, it’s just that they’re more worried about losing custom and money.

The latest figures show 378 pubs closed in Britain last year, that’s more than one a day across England, Wales and Scotland. With all the Starmer-driven business rate rises, that number is likely to rise even further in 2026.

I’m sure dog owners will accuse me of being a killjoy, but enough is enough. I’ve often thought about saying something to the owners mid-drink, but then you run the risk of getting on the wrong side of the burly bloke with the aforementioned Rhodesian Ridgeback, and there will only be one winner there.

I’ve never seen this phenomenon in Ireland, certainly not in Co Wexford, where I’m from. Maybe it’s on the rise here too? I don’t know, but I do know that in my local in Killurin, a dog just wouldn’t be tolerated (unless he was good at darts). And even then he’d have to be a four-legged Luke Littler.

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So if I ever buy a pub, dogs will be banned. Unless Andrea Bocelli shows up with his guide dog — and even then I’ll ask him to sing!