If your neighbour is usually jolly and cheery, and now sort of looks through you with glazed eyes, you know the reason. Political fans, in these election times, are breakfasting on tranquillisers.

We could have it trained as a truth sniffer: it would bark whenever we’re interviewing politicians who are lying through their teeth- Kristina Chetcuti

I can attest this. A friend of mine who for the past week has been more or less stoned on Valium said: “Don’t mind me – it will get worse closer to the end of the campaign as I’ll be increasing my dose.”

Dr Anton Grech, head of psychiatry at Mount Carmel Hospital, who has worked in London, told The Sunday Times he had never witnessed similar anxieties during UK general elections. But that’s not surprising. We don’t do anything by halves. We love obsessing. We suffer from nationwide obsessive-compulsive disorders.

It’s not just elections. There’s the Eurovision, the World Cup, any Italy vs England football games (including obscure friendlies), Arriva, and most especially, we love to join forces against any foreigner who hints that there’s anything wrong with Malta.

We love to rally en masse. Which is why mass meetings will never really go out of fashion here. Spending your Sunday afternoon in the midst of a sweaty crowd being carried on someone’s shoulder and screeching ‘Viva l-Labour’ or shaking your butt to ‘Ole, Ole, Ole, Nazzjonalisti’ is another way to release election tension aside from Valium.

But there is a third way. And, no, it’s not a tablet.

Style magazine of The Sunday Times of London carried an article about a latest trend: office pets. Committing to owning a dog has become almost impossible for Londoners. This has seen a rise in pet sharing and in taking pets to work, where they are deemed as an excellent icebreaker.

According to the UK Kennel Club, two in three employers who have dogs in the office notice a boost in morale: “It takes the stress out of the environment and breaks down barriers”. Google, the search-engine company, actively encourages its employees to bring their dogs to work and has even written it down in its code of conduct: “We’re a dog company” (they’re not huge fans of cats).

It dawned on me that this is what everyone needs at these election times: workplace dogs. It’s not as barking as it sounds. The International Journal of Workplace Health Management says that pets at work can help employees to relax; reduce heart rate and lower blood pressure; decrease absenteeism; improve staff morale and on the whole create a jollier work environment.

For example: I’m sure that Joseph Muscat – who on a photo doing the social media round is seen sort of -ish playing with a pup – would have been delighted to be welcomed by a bouncy dog when he visited The Times offices recently. And perhaps with a furry ball at our feet, we would all have looked a bit, erm, less stiff in the ensuing photos.

I am not trying to pitch something entirely novel here. Remember last year when the Maltese black chicken was about to go extinct? Well, I did float the idea that we perhaps ought to consider getting one at the office.

But before you know it and before I could make a strong case for it (saving the species; leading by example; having a resident mascot, and so on), the entire brood of chickens was sold out.

But now it is clearly the time to start lobbying again. Most of us would love to get a dog, but because of the long hours, we would feel bad waving off our beloved pooches as they sit sadly in the window bidding us farewell with their paws. Having a resident office pet would change all that.

We’d have someone at hand for a cuddle all the time; therefore: less tension, less stress. Whenever we’re facing a writer’s block we could take a break to walk the dog down to St Barbara’s Bastions and return in a more productive frame of mind.

If we have to work on a late shift, we’d be doing so gladly because we wouldn’t feel all alone in an echoing empty office. We could even take the office pet to meetings with us: such an icebreaker.

Of course, we could also use the pet to discover the origins of occasional nasty smells that waft in the office – like the time someone left a mug of milk on the windowsill for a month.

And it took us another month to find out where the smell was coming from.

But most of all, we could have it trained as a truth sniffer: it would bark, for example, whenever we’re interviewing politicians who are lying through their teeth.

Yes, the way I see it: the office pet is the solution to everything. It has to be this week’s PN/PL electoral proposal: free office pets for everyone for a stress-free country.

krischetcuti@gmail.com