It’s a cacophony of yapping, a cornucopia of fluff, a cuddle of doglets complacent in the knowledge they are adored.

They populate this wonderful book with tales from history as well as modern fashion and scandals galore.

By an avowed lover of small dogs, Yap! will fascinate anybody who has shared a bed with a Maltese, Chihuahua or teacup Yorkie and therefore knows that small dogs pack big power. How else would they be able to make us their slaves?

As one of that tribe of (mostly) women, I have learned a new term for what we are. ‘Doggist’ is the word: a devout worshipper at the velvet cushion of the minuscule mutt. I too have heard the mockery (‘That’s not a dog, it’s a rat on a string’) from (usually) men who believe only big dogs have a useful function.

Wrong. Experienced pug-lover and pet historian Stephanie Howard-Smith reveals how small dogs have shaped our lives as we have shaped theirs. And while bigger dogs herd, hunt, guard and rescue, a small dog’s raison d’etre is to be protected, loved and keep loneliness at bay.

In the early 16th century, an Italian builder unearthed a large, flat grey marble stone that was perfect for creating a church altar. It wasn’t an ordinary stone. Over two thousand years ago someone had engraved on it a fulsome Latin inscription – a long tribute to a beloved lapdog named Patrice, a catella or little female dog, ‘with wagging tail’. Grief for the small dog who shared the owner’s table still resonates today.

Other memorials testify to centuries of small-dog love. Walk though galleries of any art institution and you will notice the small dogs who scamper through medieval and Renaissance pictures, later adorning the velvet laps of wealthy owners.

Not that they were always welcome. In 1796 Napoleon entered his bride’s bedroom expecting his marital dues, only to find the bed occupied by Josephine’s pug, Fortuné. Ordered to go elsewhere or accept the dog, the doting military man was bitten on the leg for daring to encroach on the pet’s territory.

That’s just one sparkling story in the author’s collection – each chapter named after a small dog, from Mary Queen of Scots’s Jupiter to Paris Hilton’s Tinkerbell. Poppet, Rosette, Spada, Looty and many others live again in these pages – which badly need more illustrations to add to their charm. But dog love, it seems, had a dark side. What of the accusations that kissing and fondling lapdogs could give their indulgent female owners rabies?

Howard-Smith recounts the ‘health scares and moral panics’ fomented by 19th century dog haters who maintained that ‘one small dog can pick up enough malaria germs in his outing to supply a large family’. What, in New York?

Then there were the X-rated accusations against languorous women frolicking in beds and allowing their lapdogs to er... pleasure them. Ah well, prurient males have always been jealous of the small, pampered dogs who take their place, right up close.