I had a meeting a few nights back with the most wonderful guide dog, and I have been a little bit worried about him ever since.

The engaging and immensely sociable mutt was called Richie, a two-year-old labrador/golden retriever cross, encountered on a late-night S1 bus bound from Oxford’s Gloucester Green bus station, where we boarded, to Carterton.

He was already thoroughly at home as we took our seats, stretched out across the corridor at the feet of his master but making eyes — as the saying goes — at the passengers all around him.

Mindful that he was ‘on duty’, we were anxious not to distract him with any inappropriate pats or strokes.

We need not have worried.

“He will take all the attention he can get,” said his boss, a youngish man partially sighted, as he told us, as a consequence of having suffered a stroke.

He went on to explain that Richie was able to enjoy a break from work during the journey, and therefore open to all approaches.

Much fuss was made of him by most of the downstairs passengers, all of us delighted to have such an affable travelling companion.

Only one man stood — or rather sat — aloof.

His expression revealed him to be one of those who consider soppiness over dogs to be a form of mild insanity.

So why the worry?

Like many of his breed, it seems, Richie is as fond of food as of company.

Actually, rather fonder.

A few days earlier, guiding his master through Witney market, he had dived suddenly to one side to seize a carrot that had fallen from a stall.

Now he was facing some sort of fitness assessment from Guide Dogs bosses.

I do hope he passed.