Often when I write a column about politics I get a couple of angry people who slip unceremoniously into direct messages or emails to have a bit of a pop.
Sometimes they are simply abusive. I tend not to mind these too much as it removes any shades of grey and I can simply block them, point out grammatical errors or send loads of love heart emojis back and enjoy the reaction.
Plus, sometimes, they are quite funny in their randomness. “You, sir, are a hairy-backed jellyfish” is a personal favourite which I still don’t understand but has made it on to a list I keep in my desk drawer of the best insults.
What really annoys me is when someone makes a really coherent point that succinctly demonstrates a flaw in my argument or mentions something I hadn’t considered. All you can do in that situation is gobble down a slice of humble pie.
I tell you this simply to point out the fact that I am never too fussed about the abuse I receive on social media (admittedly, as a white straight bloke I face nothing compared with what some of my colleagues get).
Bearing this in mind, I hope you will understand when I say I am deeply worried about the reaction to this piece. This is because I am going to spend my remaining column inches attacking what, for many people, is the single most important, infallible, perfect, wonderful thing in the world – dogs.
I hate dogs. There, I said it. I feel the same angst writing that sentence as I would do if I publicly wrote “I kick toddlers”.
Many dog owners seem to be under the impression that their pooch can do absolutely no wrong. Speaking as someone who has been bitten by a dog when walking, only to be told by the owner that I had “scared him”, I can confirm that your dog can do a great deal wrong.
But it is not the two puncture-wound scars on my hand which are behind my hatred of our furry companions. It is the fact that I am very, very allergic to dogs.
To be clear, this is not allergic in that my eyes get a bit watery and I sneeze. This is allergic in that once a dog entered a house I was sleeping in without me knowing and I had to go to hospital. If I enter a house where a dog lives for five minutes, even if Fido is out for a walk, I will be wheezy and short of breath for up to a week afterwards.
There are several things that make this severe allergy all the harder to deal with. The first being that many people who find out about it tend to just ask, “Have you tried antihistamines?” which is the equivalent of asking someone who has broken their leg, “Have you tried ibuprofen?”
Another major issue I am now facing is that it seems like in the past year every single person in the whole of Wales has bought a dog. They are everywhere. Not only have I noticed this increase in ownership in the park and the amount of faeces scattered across my street, I have also noticed it in my lungs.
With pubs reopening, I have naturally spent a lot of time in the wonderful locals in my area.
Unfortunately, all these new lockdown dog owners have decided that, as their poor puppy cannot possibly be left alone for more than 30 seconds, it has to come to the pub.
And the pubs have jumped on board with this with enormous enthusiasm, with “dog friendly” signs all over the place and “adorable” little bowls left out so that dog mums (yeuch) can keep their pooches hydrated.
Now I am not expecting people to never take their dogs to public venues indoors, but I think the very least they can do is not act like I have punched their child in the face when I politely ask if they can sit away from me or, at the very least, stop their mutt from bounding round the pub.
It would be totally unacceptable for someone’s kid to try to climb on my lap while I am eating my mixed grill, but apparently when it’s a stinking, wet canine, I’m supposed to count my blessings that I’m allowed to spend some time with their pet in exchange for no longer having a normal lung capacity for the next five days.
The biggest issue I am finding is that, as a single man in his early thirties, almost every potential life partner in the whole of Wales who is a similar age has now spent thousands of pounds to have a living, breathing Will Hayward-repeller in their homes.
All this is made worse by the fact that, if I wasn’t allergic, I would bloody love a dog. Instead, I am doomed to just have my pet tortoise who, in an act totally lacking in loyalty, literally goes to sleep all winter, leaving me on my own.
