I am besotted with little white dogs.

I have had three such wee creatures in my life, and loved them all dearly. I can fall in love, instantly, with a little white dog. Some of my favourite social media accounts are ones where other white-dog-loving people post streams of photos featuring their adorable pups.

On recent travel to London, England, one morning we sauntered through Mayfair en route to that day’s touring plans and met a woman was walking her white Scottie dog, whose scarf was a riff on the British flag. I squealed. She smiled and offered to let me cuddle her pup, who was patient with my enthusiasm.

We came across another dog, albeit of the bronzed statuary kind, on our first London day, when we walked over to Hyde Park, a couple blocks to the west of the flat where we were staying. This doggy is part of the Animals in War Memorial, “a tribute to all the animals that served, suffered and died alongside the British, Commonwealth and Allied forces in the wars and conflicts of the 20th century.”

The dog is in front of a bronzed horse; these two creatures are on one side of a carved wall and on the other side are two bronzed mules.

My love of dogs is something that apparently is common in England: on one tour our guide pointed out a small standalone grave marker, surrounded by an ornate fence, that is the resting place for Giro, the pet terrier owned by the German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch, who represented the Third Reich in London from 1933-1936. The dog died and was buried in 1934; and despite the war and Britain’s hatred of Germans and Nazis, the dog’s resting place has never been harmed.

When you travel (OK, when I travel), there’s also a delightful zing when you see your favourite animal crop up in unexpected places. I have a thing for giraffes but wasn’t really expecting to see any in the midst of nine million people on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. However, my long-necked buddies were everywhere, including in a park in Mayfair, and in the ceramics collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (now rebranded as the far-breezier “V&A”).

My partner has a thing for chickens (someone has to, I guess). The V&A turned out to be the motherlode here – just two of the many we saw in that vast collection, one a metal statue and the other likely a soup tureen.

Our favourite creatures, it seems, have a way of following us everywhere, and making good days even brighter. Add in a fuzzy little white dog, and life can’t get much sweeter.

Photos: Kelley Teahen and Chris Moorehead