Dogs in Shops: Art Hounds on Cross Street, N1

Listen here, shops of London: there are a few things that will definitely, 100% make me want to be in you.

Firstly, your sales assistants will be friendly without asking what I had for breakfast, and you’ll sell a selection of artfully chosen and beautifully placed products that I can’t find online for significantly less (or at the very least, wrap your more expensive wares in pretty paper). Thirdly, you’ll ideally provide changing rooms with curtains that pull all the way across – and finally, most important of all, you will recruit a four legged animal to prowl the shop floor.

Following the news that London’s first ever cat cafe looks like it could actually be happening, and with Brixton’s sausage dog cafe currently in the fundraising stages, I am clearly not the only Londoner out there craving their creature comforts.

So if seeing dogs in shops makes you ridiculously happy, then welcome to my world. And the collection starts here.

First up, I give you:

The Art Hounds of Cross Street

I didn’t go in to meet these two, mostly because my art chat isn’t great when it’s 2pm and I’m already half a bottle of red wine down, but also because my friend had just deposited a glass of water on my lap in Le Mercury so I was a little bit chilly.

Still, these connoisseurs of the art world looked ready to assist anyone who might wonder through the door. I liked them. They made me smile.

Seen a shop dog? Cat? Horse? Please send it my way, and let me know where you found it so I can go there myself and bathe it in the right sort of love.