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It watches you having sex, and other reasons dog owners are a massive turn-off

TELLING potential dates you’ve got a dog will make them think you’re incredibly caring and hot, right? No. They’ll think these things instead.

They spend all their time picking up shit

Imagine going for a walk with the sexy new person you’ve just slept with and watching the hand that gave you all that steamy pleasure earlier picking up a fresh turd. You’ll go right off them. It’ll be even worse if it’s a runny one that necessitates them pathetically flicking at it with a stick.

Everything I own will be covered in dog hair

Do you own an expensive black coat or a brand new white sofa? Then it’s f**ked. Somehow, whatever the colour the dog is, everything you own will be covered in visible hair that you can’t get off, no matter how much you spend on lint rollers.

They can’t be spontaneous

There’s nothing more exciting than someone who is happy to drop everything and jet off for a city break in Bucharest at a moment’s notice. By the time your dog-owning lover has booked them into a kennel two weeks will have passed and you’ll be bored sick of them banging on about poor little Buddy’s separation anxiety.

It watches you have sex

Worse than having it sleep in the bed with you, is having it in the room while you’re getting it on. Your partner says he’ll bark if he’s shut out of the room, but surely that’s better than having to push a Labrador’s nose out of your new partner’s crotch while trying to maintain an erection?

They will be freakishly obsessed with it

In the olden days people kept their dog on a chain in the garden, but we’ve become so weird that we now dress them in pyjamas and let them sleep in our beds. ‘You don’t mind sharing with the fur baby, do you?’ your partner asks, prompting you to put your clothes back on and call an Uber.

Why I could never date a man without a wood-burning stove

By Charlotte Phelps

THERE is a baseline of things we expect in a relationship – respect, mutual attraction and, of course, a faux-rustic stove fuelled by little pre-chopped logs.

A wood-burning stove says a lot about a man, specifically: ‘I am incredibly middle-class and this Dik Geurts glorified metal box cost £4,000.’ That’s very attractive when I’m planning my future and factoring in private school fees and the chance to pack in my job and write my bullshit novel.

Being at one with the elemental forces of fire and nature also implies a man is primitive and virile, but not too primitive and virile, like a builder. I’ve seen the ones working on Cassie’s extension, and let’s just say evolution has not been kind to them.

Perhaps most importantly, a wood-burning stove shows taste. Not good taste, more a sheep-like devotion to predictable middle-class status symbols. But if that’s what it takes to impress the bitches I went to school with, I’m happy to be front of the herd.

But, I hear you say, what about the recent bad publicity? Well, yes, these stoves cause horrendous air pollution. But you have to be realistic about the environment. I recycle everything that doesn’t need washing out, and that gives me a clean slate to go on holiday to Crete as much as I like.

I’m more concerned about particulates entering your lungs, liver and brain. It’s every mother’s worst nightmare – having thick children. But with a private tutor to make them more intelligent we’ll probably barely notice a few missing brain cells. Certainly not worth giving up such a homely fire for.

Yes, I see my romantic future as inextricably bound up with wood-burning stoves. I’m currently seeing a solicitor called Dan, but frankly I’d dump him like that for a merchant banker with a better stove. It sounds harsh, but the heart wants what it wants.

Who knows where this magical journey of love will take me? Hopefully to meeting ‘the one’, who not only has a wood-burning stove but is also receptive to the idea of getting an Aga.

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