Being one of Paris Hilton's dogs must make for an easy life. You have your very own doggy jacket, no doubt top-of-the-range canine cuisine and all the squeaky bone toys you could ask for. True, you occasionally have to get stuffed into a handbag and carted across grotesque socialite parties, but overall existence must be pretty peachy.

Oh - unless you get eaten by a wild coyote.

Paris is reportedly enduring non-stop floods of tears after two of her seventeen pooches were snatched up by varmints outside her Hollywood home. A source close to Paris has babbled thus:

"Paris was really upset about it. Some people think she's eccentric, having so many pets, but she just really, really loves animals and it was devastating for her."

All of which raises a couple of issues.

• Number one: is it really that clever an idea to let your doggies mill around outside in an area well-known for urban predators (and we mean wildlife when we say that, rather than a slang term for R. Kelly)?
• Number two: why is it that Paris Hilton gets called 'eccentric' for owning 17 dogs and building them a miniature mansion to stay in, while a granny who lives on a Salford council estate and keeps 13 cats (all of which she doesn't bother cleaning up after) is generally seen as a stark-raving lunatic?
• Number three: while it would normally be considered slightly mean to laugh at someone whose pets have just been gobbled up, it's mandatory under international law to make exceptions for vacuous rich-kid twats.