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Inside Out meets the new breed of pooch pamperers who treat their pets as though they are their own child.

These canine buddies are looked after like babies and have been dubbed 'fur kids'.

A girl's best friend

Professional look-a-like Suzie Kennedy may be every inch the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe, but diamond's aren't always a girl's best friend.

Suzie's heart belongs to her 11-year-old Bichon Frise, Lucy.

"Lucy is the equivalent of looking after a baby, but it's probably easier to look after a baby because you can get a lot of help and also you can take them into restaurants," she says.

Girl's best friend - Suzie with her dog

"I've got no need or no desire to have a child at all at the moment. It might change but she gives me everything that I need."

Suzie even has replica Marilyn Monroe outfits for the dog which match her own wardrobe.

"My relationship with Lucy is definitely beyond a pet. It's on a different level than you have with a human because humans judge you on what car you drive, how you look.

"Lucy doesn't know I look like Marilyn Monroe. She has no idea who Marilyn Monroe is.

"But if you love her, and you're kind and you're sweet to her, you have unconditional love, and if you can find that in a human then let me have the recipe because I've only ever found it in dogs - it's completely unconditional love."

Canine love

Emma Courtney and her partner Rob are also dog lovers and they've opted to have two dogs rather than starting a family.

Emma runs a PR company from home.

Like any working woman her routine has been turned upside down caring for her new 'babies'.

"The only romance that goes in our bed on a Sunday morning is a Great Dane and a Basset Hound firmly down the middle of us," she says.

Dog dreams - in bed with the 'family'.

Anna Webb got her mini Bull Terrier Molly seven years ago and the pair quickly became inseparable.

Anna, like many women today, is one of those older women for whom kids just didn't happen.

"I always thought when I was younger that I'd get married, have 2.2 children, live in a big house in the country... that was how I was brought up, very traditionally.

"So bringing Molly into my life when my father sadly passed away, that was a real watershed point in my life."

For these owners canine love is like something from the deepest bottom part of your stomach - a deep, deep love.

Need to nurture

So why are women turning increasingly to dogs as substitute children?

Ingrid Collins, psychologist, explains the phenomenon, "The urge to love and to nurture, to care for something smaller than yourself, is inbuilt in our DNA, men and women, although women are more open to admitting it.

"We need to talk. We could either talk to dolls as we did when we were a child and we were schooled in the idea that that's what little girls did. When you're a grown woman dressing dolls isn't necessarily acceptable but dressing a living doll is maybe slightly more acceptable."

It might explain Suzie Kennedy's passion for dressing up her dog in Barbie-style outfits.

But for the owners with 'fur kids' it's an obsession they treat very seriously - a bit like being in a special, secret society.