Out for dinner in London with her husband and two-month-old son, Gizzelle Cade watched another woman walk into Gordon Ramsay’s Street Pizza pushing a pram decorated with trinkets and toys. She assumed a baby was inside. Instead, the woman pulled out a dachshund, placed an absorbent puppy-training pad on the floor and set the dog on it. “I was completely taken aback,” Cade said. “To see pretty much an open bathroom where I was dining with my newborn – it was insulting.” Cade, an American influencer now living in the UK, complained to two waiters and a manager but says nothing was done. When she confronted the owner of the dog, she claims the woman compared her pet to Cade’s baby: “Well, your baby shits and pisses. My dog needs to shit and piss too.” Cade posted a video on TikTok that has since been viewed more than 20 million times, sparking a fierce national debate about dogs in public spaces.
A spokesperson for the restaurant said it reviewed CCTV footage and found no evidence the dog urinated or defecated on the premises. Cade herself cannot confirm whether the animal actually used the pad. What is clear is that her complaint – and the racist abuse she says she subsequently received online because she is Black – tapped into a far broader tension. “People were already thinking about this privately, about dogs and public spaces and boundaries and hygiene,” she said. Hundreds of messages poured in from others who are tired of dogs everywhere, including those with allergies. Cade stressed she loves dogs and once owned a shih-tzu, but added: “Every place is not a place that is or should be dog-friendly.” She specifically distinguished assistance dogs from pets.
The rise of the canine everywhere
If it feels as though dogs have taken over British public life, the numbers bear that out. Estimates suggest there are now around 13 million dogs in the UK, up from roughly 9 million before the pandemic. The COVID-19 lockdowns were a powerful accelerant. Battersea Dogs & Cats Home reported a 53% increase in applications to rehome dogs between April and June 2020 compared with the previous three months, and 31% of those who acquired a cat or dog during that period had never previously considered pet ownership. The main reason, cited by 87% of “pandemic puppy” owners, was simply having more time at home. These new dogs were more likely to live with owners who had less prior experience of dogs and more likely to be in households with children.
The shift to hybrid and flexible working cemented the change. Owen Sharp, chief executive of the Dogs Trust, has seen the transformation first-hand. “Not that long ago, you had to plan quite carefully where you were going with your dog, whereas these days, you can pretty much assume that you will find places,” he said. Businesses – cafes, hotels, restaurants, offices – adapted to accommodate the surge in dog owners. “If you want to bring customers back, we need to make it a dog-friendly environment,” Sharp added. The result is a landscape where dogs ride on buses, sit in cafes, accompany their owners to co-working spaces and, if a parliamentary petition succeeds, may soon join passengers on flights returning to the UK.
Nikki Beatnik, a DJ and record producer who owns a miniature pinscher cross called Minnie, said she tries to take her dog everywhere, including into central London shops and on public transport. Her previous rescue dog, Purdy, did the same. “It feels like it’s getting more like LA, where you can take your dog everywhere,” Beatnik said. She has not faced confrontations and said that most people are friendly, but she is careful to be patient: “Not everyone is a dog person.”
Hygiene, health and the hidden costs
The increasing canine presence is not without its downsides. Keep Britain Tidy estimates that half a million dog owners never pick up after their pets, leaving an estimated 35 tonnes of faeces on the ground. Dog mess is not just unpleasant: under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005, failing to clean up can result in fines of £50 to £1,000. Local councils can also impose Public Spaces Protection Orders, which restrict where dogs can go, require leads in certain areas, and limit the number of dogs a person can handle. Breaching a PSPO carries a Fixed Penalty Notice of £100 or a court fine of up to £1,000.
More insidious is the chemical contamination from flea and tick treatments. Pesticides such as imidacloprid and fipronil – both banned for agricultural use because of their harm to wildlife – are regularly applied to dogs. Studies have detected these chemicals in UK rivers and ponds at concentrations known to damage aquatic invertebrates. Dogs swimming in designated canine areas on Hampstead Heath, for example, can wash the pesticides off their fur into the water. Meanwhile, dog allergies affect an estimated 10–20% of the global population; in the UK, roughly 8% of adults are sensitised to dog allergens. “Hypoallergenic” breeds remain popular, but research shows allergen production varies widely even within breeds.
Welfare, training and the rise of fake assistance dogs
Clive Wynne, director of the Canine Science Collaboratory at Arizona State University, argues that most dogs enjoy being out and about: “Going out and about and seeing things and smelling things is very positive for dogs.” But he emphasised that dogs are individuals. They need roughly 14 hours of sleep per day, a fact many owners overlook. “If they’re being taken out all day with no opportunity to rest, that would become stressful,” he said.
Beyond welfare, there is growing concern about the interactions between pet dogs and trained assistance dogs. Vicky Worthington, executive director of Assistance Dogs UK, said that when other dogs approach or misbehave around a working assistance dog, they can distract it from its job – whether that is alerting to a medical event, guiding a visually impaired person, or acting as a hearing aid. An additional problem is the increasing number of people who misrepresent their pets as assistance dogs, most commonly as “emotional support animals”. Under the Equality Act 2010, an assistance dog is defined as one trained to guide a blind person, assist a deaf person, or trained by a prescribed charity to help a disabled person with a specific condition. These dogs have legal access rights to most public places. Emotional support animals have no such status: “Emotional support dogs aren’t referenced in legislation, but trained assistance dogs are,” Worthington said. Assistance Dogs UK is exploring ways to create clearer legal definitions and formal recognition for genuine assistance dogs.
Historical echoes and demographic shifts
Wynne, whose book on the history of the dog-human relationship is due next year, says we may think this is a new phenomenon, but it is not. In medieval England, an edict was issued to monasteries and nunneries banning more pets because dogs were “overrunning the place”. In Shakespeare’s works, dogs appear as a nuisance – barking, biting. A visitor from centuries ago would look at modern cities and wonder where all the children are. With fewer children in society – the trend toward dual income, no kids, with a dog (dinkwads) – people have become more accommodating of dogs. Research by the Times found that 34% of postcode areas in England now have more dogs than children. “You get competition in city councils between people who want to see areas of a park made into a kids’ playground, compared with people who want to see it made into a dog area,” Wynne said.
He added that the modern practice of letting dogs sleep on beds and cuddle on sofas was once reserved for the upper classes. “If you were to wind back the clock one century, most people would find that very strange.” Wynne, a lifelong dog owner and researcher, is himself annoyed by the trend of taking dogs into supermarkets where they “stick their noses into foodstuffs that are close enough to the ground”. He noted that while dogs are “by and large tremendously wonderful, gentle beings”, they can be unpredictable around children. In 2024, police recorded more than 32,500 dog attacks in the UK, though the majority occur in the home. Wynne warned that a single high-profile incident – “one horrific news story of a child being harmed by a dog that’s somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be, like in a supermarket or inside a restaurant” – could quickly swing public opinion back against the free-for-all.
Navigating a solution
Sharp of the Dogs Trust said his belief is that “the vast majority of dog owners want to do the right thing” and that it is “beholden on all of us who are dog owners to be mindful” of those who do not want to be near dogs. Local councils already review their Public Spaces Protection Orders. Some voices have called for the reintroduction of dog licensing, which was mandatory in Great Britain until 1987 (and remains in place in Northern Ireland). The old system was abolished because of widespread non-compliance and high enforcement costs, but it has been proposed again as a way to fund public clean-up and education. The existing legal framework already requires microchipping (since April 2016, with fines up to £500 for non-compliance), identification tags under the Control of Dogs Order 1992 (fines up to £5,000), and compliance with the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which mandates that owners meet their dog’s basic needs. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 prohibits specific breeds and imposes penalties for dogs dangerously out of control. Yet enforcement is patchy, and many dog owners remain unaware of the rules.
Cade, who has received messages from people with allergies and from parents who feel their children are at risk, said the debate has resonated precisely because it touches on basic questions about boundaries and respect. She is not anti-dog, she said – just anti-entitlement. And as the number of dogs continues to grow and their presence in every corner of daily life becomes the new normal, the pushback may be only just beginning.