Dougie Wallace’s Well Heeled takes up a subject that could easily have been played for a single joke—the cosseted, accessorised dog of the wealthy owner—and follows it across four cities: London, Milan, New York and Tokyo. Published by Dewi Lewis in 2017, the book gathers 204 colour plates across 240 pages, and the itinerary matters. What emerges is not a portrait of one local habit but a comparative study of an international condition, in which “pet parents” may spend on grooming and outfitting an animal what they spend on themselves.

The comedy is real, and Wallace’s reputation as an observer of British social theatre is well earned, but the photographs do not rest on it. His dogs hold the camera with expressions that read as worldly, sometimes as performance; the book’s pleasure lies partly in that reciprocal gaze. Against the coiffure and the crystal collar, though, Wallace keeps returning to anatomy—claws, paw pads, incisors, a wet nose, a beard heavy with drool. Those details, framed from a height most of us never occupy, are where the animals assert themselves, and where the series shifts from satire into something more attentive.

That double register is what distinguishes the project from the fashion-adjacent pet portraiture it superficially resembles. The animals are not props. They are photographed as creatures who would rather chase a ball than be wheeled about in a pram, and the tension between the two facts—the pampering and the dog—is allowed to stand unresolved. The modest 167 by 215mm hardback format suits this: a book to be held and looked into closely rather than displayed at a distance.

For collectors of contemporary documentary practice, Well Heeled belongs with the run of books Wallace produced in these years for Dewi Lewis, including Harrodsburg, whose making was the subject of a 2017 BBC documentary. Its interest lies in watching a photographer with a sharp eye for social ritual turn that eye on the relations between people, money and animals, and refuse the easy punchline.