The problem of undesirable neighbours is a big theme at the moment, and not just over here. In Manhattan, residents’ boards at the city’s smartest apartment blocks have extended the obligatory would-be resident’s interview to their pets. Dog-vetting can last up to 45 minutes – often longer than the owner’s interview – and may include a doorbell response test, a weigh-in or a ball-fetching test.

Naturally, this development has been regarded as neighbour control taken too far. (What next – monitoring the baby’s sleep patterns? Checking the cook’s recipes for odour levels?) But that misses the real motive of dog-vetting. The dog interview is not about checking out the animal’s suitability – as if. This is about skewering its owners right to the bone. As the Jesuits might have said: “Show me a dog for 45 minutes, and I’ll show you its master’s psychosocial profile. Heck, I’ll tell you his dreams.”

If anything, this tendency has become more pronounced of late. There’s the vogue for handbag dogs (see Paris Hilton and co), which automatically tell you that the owner is female or homosexual, high-maintenance, the indoors type, a late riser and year-round dieter, a party animal (probably), single (certainly), with no interest in community cooperation. So far, so much more revealing than a face-to-face interview at which the owner of a handbag dog is on her best behaviour and quite capable of coming across as a wholesome bluestocking.

Then you have the standard pit-bull owner’s profile (no need to go into that, surely); the labrador couple (they entertain a lot; Sunday lunch is their favourite); and the owner of the mongrel rescue dog in good condition (not into brands, independent, liberal, coffee-drinker). Bear in mind that you see the dogs in conjunction with the owners, so they fill in the gaps mere references can’t: Frank turns up with Madeleine the dachshund, and suddenly you know so much more about Frank than you could have gleaned from a conversation.

In fact, the breeds and the names are only a small part of the doggie reveal. The whole point of the pet interview is to monitor the way the dog behaves towards its owner. Cowering and dejected is a clue; ebullient and dominating is another. The dog who pays not the blindest bit of attention to its master is telling you that this person’s children will be posting rockets through your letter box. Equally, the dog with the personality void that blends into the background like sea grass has an owner who will want to take over the running of the common-parts committee, and will grip you in the lobby every morning to talk about children’s activities.

Fat, slow dogs have lazy masters. Nervy dogs have absent ones. Rude dogs live with rude people. (They don’t notice – otherwise they couldn’t bear it.) Dogs that wear scarves are owned by tossers. They’re such a giveaway, pets, when you think about it. Who can risk that kind of exposure?

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