Whilst I spend a large part of my working life on appointments with PRs, looking at the new collections and meeting designers, I can’t say the same for madam: until a couple of weeks ago, she’d only been to one press day, for GAP A/W12, where she had a fine old time trotting around the converted dairy in Bloomsbury where it was held, but rather disgraced herself by hiding under a pile of jeans.

So imagine her joy when an invitation arrived specifically for her: to a Saturday afternoon tea, hosted by London PR agency Trace Publicity, and consisting only of brands and retailers for our canine friends.

There were all sorts of interesting things for us – and our dogs to explore. P Bad’s favourite food purveyors Lily’s Kitchen, were out in force, there were  toys and beds from East End Best Friend and Holly & Lil collars, and The Sprindly Brindly Dog Company had their Waterloo dog bowls on display.

I was initially a bit dubious about the fleecy dog toys from East End Best Friend – P Bad can destroy most dog stuff in a matter of seconds, buy I am super impressed to report that a month later both her twisty toy and her pom pom are still very much intact. They aren’t expensive (from £6), and given that they have lasted so long, they seem like an ideal Christmas present investment for any dogs requiring festive cheer this year.

Here are Holly & Slim checking out the East End Best Friend Dog Bed together.

The highlight of the afternoon was the one-to-one training session held downstairs, by Louise Glazebrook of The Darling Dog Company. P Bad can be tricky, given her rescue dog past, and I learnt so much even from a short session with Louise. I really cannot recommend her highly enough. Here are Louise and P Bad in action together:

Holly & Lil collars:

Here’s Slim the smooth haired miniature dachshund with his person, Morag Patterson of British InStyle. (Slim is a future Dog of the Day.)

And here’s Holly again. (Holly was LLG Dog of the Day last week.)

P Bad’s absolute favourite:

We rounded off the afternoon by having our joint portrait drawn by by artist Richard Short:

And we all had a Molly Bakes cupcake to take home.

(Doggie Cupcakes – for humans – by Molly Bakes.)