OPINION: I once spent an excruciating weekend with two great friends and a new puppy. It would have been fine, if it hadn't been for that filthy animal.

What is it about small, salivating dogs that turns grown adults into simpering fools? If I'd downed a wine for every time I heard the word "cuuuuuute" that weekend I would have been toasted, which may have made it easier.

This admission is not going to make me popular, but I'm happy to forge on regardless, because I have made my peace with the fact I dislike dogs.

That's right. I don't care how fluffy their fur, how wide-open their beseeching eyes. Show me all the pics of your dog and the gifs of your dog and all the Snapchats you want: I still won't like it. I don't think it's cute.

"This is where I go when we go on adventures right" writes @moseswrotethis | 📸 by @cnkillingsworth #dogsofinstagram A post shared by DogsOf (@dogsofinstagram) on May 22, 2017 at 1:47pm PDT

This renders me a something of a social pariah in an era where sharing and admiring pet videos is a daily ritual. Buzzfeed even put together this curated list for people like me, the monsters who don't like dogs.

At work, if someone wants to show me a puppy pic, I warn against it. They always insist on showing me anyway, and then look at me like I've contracted rabies when there's no reaction. More than once, I've been accused of having no soul.

Why is it a problem that I don't like dogs? I find it far more alarming when people claim they don't like babies, which are small beings of the same species. Yet somehow this is socially acceptable. Discussing this with a workmate, he quietly admitted he doesn't much like pets either. "I sort of keep it to myself, to be honest," he said. What about when someone shows you a cat gif? "I sort of just pretend to like it. My closest circle knows not to bother."

It's not like I hate all animals. Flamingos are awesome. Cows, I quite like. During my short-lived career as a dairy farmer, I even became close friends with one. Me and number 101 would chew the fat together every afternoon on the slow walk to the milking shed. Or rather, she would amble alongside the motorbike, in comfortable silence.

But when dogs aren't slobbering, they're jumping all over you, ruining your furniture, and insisting they need to sleep inside like humans. There is nothing worse than someone's hideous mongrel leaping at you and having the owner giggle: "Oh, Rover, you're so funny. Isn't she friendly?"

If my skin were hanging off my arm in shreds, would they still be laughing? "Oh, Rover's just a bit snacky! How adorable. It's only a flesh wound. Oh, you're bleeding out? Cuuuute!"

One of my favourite movie scenes is the one in Anchorman where a biker punts Baxter, the dog belonging to Will Ferrell's character Ron Burgundy, straight off a bridge. Hilarious.

This is all likely to come back to bite me. My toddler currently loves dogs. My husband is dead set on getting a Boxer. There's a chance that one day, I'll be forced into becoming a dog lover too.

But don't count on it. And until then, get that gif out of my face.

Michelle Duff writes a weekly column for Life & Style.