But that hardly justified the cruel bargain wherein I accepted a mouthful of liver treats in exchange for my knackers: it means I’ve never pulled my weight in the dog procreation department.
Fortunately, my luckier colleagues have made up for my lack of performance. We hounds now exceed 900 million in number, roughly half of us as pets and the other half freelancing as street, community and village dogs.
Our growth trajectory is steady: demographers say there will be more dogs than humans in many developed nations by 2100, because human fertility rates are plummeting.
Humans shot up to more than eight billion in number before starting to fall away, and even India isn’t producing enough children to replace departing souls.
In Japan, The Boss tells me the fertility rate is approaching just one per woman, which means half-a-child each for a couple. In 1950 the rate was four.
And humans are living longer. This year the number of Japanese centenarians reached around 100,000, and the country produces more nappies for incontinent old people than it does for babies.
He says around half the countries in the world - including almost all the rich ones and some of the poorer ones – have fertility rates below replacement. This is why dogs are powering ahead – not just because they can, but because they are needed.
The Boss says there are complex reasons for the reluctance to have children – housing and childcare are expensive and raising a family means putting off other things like overseas travel, eating out and expensive or time-consuming hobbies and interests.
So instead of reproducing, humans are heading for fur babies instead. They’re choosing a species that can’t ask for help with their homework but still look at them adoringly while they eat.
This brave new world for canines offers great promise. All those unused playrooms are ideal for expanded dog beds. The suburban home of 2050 won’t have a children’s wing – it will have a distinguished hounds’ contemplation suite.
In many big cities, the dog infrastructure now rivals the kids, with doggy day-care, dog bakeries, dog yoga and dog swimming pools. There are behavioural therapists for the dogs that are, frankly, just bored or ill-trained. The pet-care industry is on steroids, with humans having decided collectively that, if they are going to have fewer dependents, those dependents better have paws.
Which leads me to the matter of inheritance. When there are fewer or no children, who gets the estate? The pooch! We’re already seeing humans leaving millions to their pets. Why leave your fortune to some ungrateful nephew who never calls when the faithful hound provides unconditional love and shows up for dinner every night?
We’ll be needed in the job market for much more than therapy dogs, rescue dogs and detection dogs – we could expand into middle management. Political representation seems inevitable and all those empty schools could be converted into advanced training academies for dogs.
Of course, with great population comes great responsibility and we’ll need to step up. But humans chose smartphones over strollers - we chose to remain loyal, attentive and remarkably fertile. Woof!
