The REAL value is sport is immeasurable

The REAL value is sport is immeasurable

Rich Clarke

This is my dog. His name is Finn.

He wakes me up in the middle of the night, often leaves morning ‘messages’ under the dining room table and impinges on our choice of family holiday, restaurant or any other form of day out. He constantly needs me to open the back door so he can bark at birds that invade our garden’s airspace and has escaped under the neighbour’s fence so often we have started to buy bridge-building tins of Quality Street in bulk.

I love him.

Finn is the first dog I have ever owned. And, without a meticulous PR assault by my 14-year-old daughter, the thought would never have entered my head. I could have bought a decent second-hand car for what we paid for him and the monthly vet insurance costs more than we spend on Netflix, Amazon and The Times combined.

But now I not only want him, I need him.

We had contacted a breeder well before lockdown and he joined us at the end of the summer in 2020. By then Covid had sent Britain dog crazy. Around 3.2m pets were bought in the first year of the pandemic, with Millennials leading the trend. There was a run on dog and cat food and we were even advised to be wary of dog-knappers when we took Finn for a walk.

“Dogs are a drain on the three things modern society seems to value the most – time, money and freedom.”

Despite returning to something that passes for ‘normality’, this year the UK will still spend £8bn on its pets, most of the owners live in cities and a third are under 40.

Why do we do this? Dogs are a drain on the three things modern society seems to value the most – time, money and freedom.

Clearly, the answer is emotional connection.

No one else raises an eyebrow when I bundle through the front door after a stressful day. But Finn rushes up to greet me as if I have just returned from a six-month expedition to the North Pole. He’ll sit by the window for hours while we are out, waiting for the familiar hum of our car pulling up to the drive. He wakes me up with a morning nuzzle and snuggles into my lap every evening in front of the television. Most poignantly, he sought me out and stayed by my side throughout an agonising, sleepless night in the spare room when I was suffering from gallstones.

Animals do this because they care and, unlike humans, show it constantly. They teach us the importance of an uncomplicated, unconditional connection.

That’s why therapy pets can help troubled children relate at school, stimulate Alzheimer’s patients as they lose their faculties and are friends to the lonely.

A senior policeman once told me how horses were purposely over-deployed during the bad old days of football hooliganism as, no matter the nastiness spewing from rival thugs, the animal would be the centre of friendly attention.

Finn and county cricket are two things pretty much guaranteed to improve my mood. Both are eccentric, make stupid decisions and can be an immense frustration. But it is worth it because they simply… make… life… better.

At the end of last season, I stole a day at a meaningless game at Northampton because I was depressed. I threw the ball back to Sir Alastair from the boundary as I walked in, saw Ben Allison’s Championship breakthrough on a fine day for Essex and returned much happier for some late summer sun, a chit-chat and watching this wonderful waste of time once more. It was either that or a trip to the doctors. But with my mood lightened, I would argue my productivity was much better over the following few days. I was more connected and less grumpy with my family. Everybody won.

“In the past two years, it has become clear that a small but significant proportion of our population - young and old, successful and ordinary - have never properly returned from that period of uncertainty and enforced isolation. A part of them was left idle for so long that it has ceased to function in the way it did. ”

After two years of dog ownership, I appreciate why the UK reached for the collar and lead during lockdown. It was much better than reaching for a bottle or something much more destructive.

In truth, more of us should have done it because, in the past two years it has become clear that a small but significant proportion of our population - young and old, successful and ordinary - have never properly returned from that period of uncertainty and enforced isolation. A part of them was left idle for so long that it has ceased to function in the way it did.

Meanwhile, many of us who did return decided to abandon the furry friends who helped us through those dark, dark days.

Mental health is a trendy topic these days. Yesterday’s “grumpy bastard” is today’s “depression survivor”. But we need to look at ourselves, our actions and what we really value. Personally, I am sick of people beseeching me to ‘be kind’ while their actions are that of Gordon Ramsey before his morning coffee has kicked in. The adverts might tell us ‘we’re worth it’ but society (and especially social media) still screams judgement via the usual criteria - money, status and appearance.

My dog has enriched my life and, though troublesome at times, continues to soothe the soul of my family. For its devotees, the gentle yet ultimately pointless hubbub of county cricket acts in precisely the same way.

This is how and why they should be valued.

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