I have never had neighbours before – only anonymous bodies that lived next to me, or above and below me. I always saw their presence as an indicator of the degree to which community had collapsed in the modern world. Each of us, seeing others only as problems, complaining to the council and cops behind each other's backs and leaving accusatory notes pinned to the communal door.

How many times had I previously bemoaned the social disintegration of society, wistfully thinking: "Ah, if only I was part of a community in which people cared for each other." Only to retreat to my solitary room, swearing at the sound of rave music coming from the flat above, cooking up secret plans to get my neighbours arrested or evicted.

So now it's a shock and a surprise to find I am part of a living breathing network of neighbours – the kind of impossible utopia I would have thought long dead. And this not through any political activism on my part, but simply through ownership of a dog.

I have now exchanged life stories with at least seven former total strangers, and discussed vandalism, littering and local planning permissions. And I've come to realise that by having a dog I am already helping to change the face of the neighbourhood.

As new neighbour Alec explained, dog-walking in the park in the evening is one of the best ways of keeping down youth crime and vandalism. Let's face it, would you want to smash windows with a Rhodesian Ridgeback (originally bred for hunting lions) running round you excitedly, perhaps assuming you're throwing sticks for her? Even dropping litter could result in the immense slobbering creature returning your rubbish to you and setting it down at your feet, for you to throw again. Drunken singing of sectarian songs is just not as likely to happen when a bull mastiff and an Alsatian are trying to join in the singing.

One of my new neighbours is an old communist who owns a very posh poodle with a skin condition. I have had lessons in local history and discovered that Lhasa Apso means 'Tiny Mountain Goat' – they were bred for defence of Buddhist temples, being a type of spiritually glorified ankle-biter.

Within a week of Hilda-dog having moved here we met a couple with dogs who exclaimed: "So this is the famous Hilda!" All the local dog owners had apparently been discussing her 24-hour journey from Sydney to Glasgow and were keen to meet her, and – by inference – us.

All this community goodwill has struck a blow to my cynicism. Could it be that having a dog is the answer to the alienation I've suffered all of my life? That canines could be the cure for all of society's ills? The irony must be that when humans are put together we become inhumane to each other, but give us a dog and suddenly our human qualities are revealed.