At one time, there were only two career options for a beagle. You could either join a pack and pursue innocent wild animals or you were locked in a cage and forced to smoke 60 a day so that white-coated observers could confirm the inevitable and then suppress it from public view.

Thankfully, those options are confined to the dark ages. Barney has chosen to pursue a more relaxed career – looking cute. I was trying to enjoy a quiet pint in a riverside pub on Sunday only to be accosted by a stream of admirers (his, regrettably, not mine) who wanted to stroke, feed, photograph and smile at him. Barney lapped it up, even enjoying the attentions of a two-year-old whose mother warned me that her sole means of communication was to pinch something and see what response she would get. Fortunately, Barney considered this a small price to pay for yet another biscuit. (There were two types available on the bar).

Today the world of canine employment is bristling with opportunities. There are the traditional; sled pullers, sheep dogs, sniffers seeking out drugs at ports and airports, explosives with the police or armed forces; search and rescue dogs that sniff out bodies buried in collapsed buildings or lost on mountain sides. A nose will go a long way. Friends recently employed a freelance sniffer dog to track their lost pooch when he went missing in a wood for several worrying days. It’s even reported that the US army tracked down and identified members of Bin Laden’s family using dogs specially bred and trained to identify his DNA.

The guide dog movement after sporadic ancient antecedents dating back to the Romans, began in earnest with the first training school established in Germany in 1916 for those blinded in the trenches. In recent years, their ranks have been swelled by hearing and mobility dogs helping people with disabilities undertake daily tasks that the rest of us take for granted.

Barney moonlights part-time as a therapy dog, visiting dementia patients, to help them reminisce and reconnect with a past now eluding them in return for a biscuit. Dogs are now welcome in many hospitals as ‘pat’ dogs; the act of stroking a pet has a calming influence and reduces the blood pressure of the stroker. Dogs are now employed to help victims of crime, children read in schools: if you’ve little confidence, reading a story to a dog, who will still adore you even when you stumble over a word is so much more accepting than even the most sympathetic TA, parent or teacher!

And there are thousands of unsung canine heroes; companion dogs for the lonely and housebound, combatting everyday loneliness – the scourge of modern old age. Thank God for organisations such as PDSA and the fabulous Cinnamon Trust who will step in to care for the canine carers. It’s a dog’s life…