Let’s get one thing straight: I know you cherish your family pet. I see you, I acknowledge you, I respect you, I validate you. I myself have owned animals, assuming that a 14.3 per cent stake in an ornery budgerigar who died in 1986 still qualifies. But in the interests of full disclosure, a proposal that pets should be allowed on public transport provoked a less emotional response than I had when I last discovered the 6.28pm service to East Hills was running late. And I wasn’t even on the 6.28pm service to East Hills.

Back to you, though.

Should Rover have an Opal card?Credit: iStock

If you want to haul your temperamental pygmy goat onto a peak-hour train, where it will rest comfortably in the confines of my armpit, have at it. I’ll happily make room on the seat for your bespoke labraschnoodledoodle that you had imported from some bucolic locale where it was delivered by ululating canine midwives in a specialist birthing centre. See? I can get on board with the cult of the fur baby. Literally, even.

But if there’s one aspect of the announcement that had me nodding more enthusiastically than your dog’s dashboard counterpart, it was the discovery that the animals could be restricted to certain carriages, emulating “quiet carriages” on regional routes.

Respectfully, I’d propose one small change, though. I am fine with hanging out with your Japanese fighting fish. I will nudge your dozing kinkajou awake when it’s about to miss its stop. I will even hold the door for your ageing tarantula. But, dear pet owner, if you fit into any of the following categories, I would like to see it written into legislation that you personally have to travel in the animal car, irrespective of whether your pet is with you that day or not.

To wit, you cannot travel in my carriage:

… if your pet is the star of its own Instagram/Facebook/blog page. I know that’s harsh. How else will your adorable carpet python humblebrag about the number of frozen rats it took down for lunch? And whatever will you do with all the footage of your cockatoo saying the f-word in four different languages? I don’t know, but you’ll figure something out. Alternatively, get out of my carriage.

… if you have ever started a sentence “Rottweilers/American pit bull terriers/German shepherds are so unfairly maligned … poor Rocky is so fundamentally misunderstood” only to watch poor, misunderstood Rocky lunge at a three-year-old. Off to the animal carriage, and I hope someone’s hangry axolotl is in the mood for human.