MY beautiful boy is very disgruntled indeed.

At the weekend dog show he came home with nothing. Not one single rosette was pinned upon his collar. According to the dog show judges, he is a loser.

He doesn’t have the waggiest tail (he does) he isn’t the most handsome (he is, he is) nor does he have the most appealing eyes (um, hello? Of course he has – when he looks at me with love, his deep brown eyes turn purple).

No, those accolades were given to inferior mutts.

Clearly the two judges, who were a cross between Judge Pickles and Barbara Woodhouse, had been either bribed or the blazing sun was playing havoc on their judgement.

You know, they probably missed my beautiful boy’s attributes only to slap a rosette on the nearest breathing mammal, in order to get shelter. The winners could have been sheep.

It had nothing to do with the Dog taking a running leap to steal a burger mid-bite from some poor unsuspecting visitor. Or the fact that he doesn’t much like beards and the judge looked exactly like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top fame.

Sigh.

The Teen, who I had bribed with cash, came along but to be honest, she wasn’t terribly enthusiastic.

In fact at one point I wondered if her hand had actually turned into an Apple product as she was permanently attached to her phone, deep in conversation with some 16-year-old boy who uses an alias. Worried, much?

Anyway, my friend, who had driven almost a 250-mile round trip to enter Reggie, her new Staffie rescue dog into every single category, like me, also nearly lost the will to live by the end.

Reggie, who spent three hours trying to mount everything on four legs, must have been spotted by the judges, because he came away without a rosette.

He may have fared better if there had been a category for stamina or technique in the art of love.

We were both quite maudlin after the judging, so drowned our sorrows in tea and an overpriced coconut cake.

Every cloud.