As dating horror stories go, mine is pretty distasteful. Indeed, those eating breakfast right now may wish to look away.

Some 15 years ago, on a dark and gloomy winter's night in northern England, my "date" arrived at my house to take me out. We were schoolmates and had been "going out" for about a week, in the loosest possible sense of the term. I think the reality was that he had called me up and asked if I wanted to go out with him and then we had spent the next week avoiding eye contact in class.

On the night in question, my parents were out and I was doing geography homework. I don't think I even knew that the boy ? whose name I won't give to spare his blushes ? was going to turn up. That in itself is a bit of a teen dating no-no. I'd advise all guys to at least inform their sweethearts that they are planning to show. It gives girls a chance to put on a bit of make-up and call their friends to shriek with excitement down the phone.

As it was, my embarrassment at not looking my best that evening was nothing compared to the humiliation awaiting my date. I opened the door, awkwardly let him in, and proceeded (God only knows why!) to give him a tour of the house.

I can't now remember what possessed me to do this but it proved a devastating mistake. As we walked, a deeply terrible smell began to pervade the air. It got worse...and worse...and worse. Eventually, our stilted circuit of the property complete, we realised the problem. The object of my affections had trodden dog dirt across every carpet my parents possessed.

His shoes were literally caked in the stuff ? and now the house was too.

There wasn't really time for me to register the horrifying mortification he must have felt. My mum and dad were due home any time so the clean-up operation had to commence.

Out came the bucket from under the sink, the cleaning products and a cloth (which, to add yet another unsavoury note, turned out to be an old pair of knickers).

We scrubbed and scrubbed some more until the filthy deposits were gone.

It was, without doubt, the worst possible way to spend a first date. And still the smell remained. We escaped the house and its terrible odour and spent the next hour or two wandering around the housing estate where we lived (this really was, in those innocent days, a bona fide way to spend a date). But the conversation didn't exactly flow.

The boy, who I had had a crush on for what felt like forever, wouldn't hold my hand. He felt dirty, he said.

The relationship, such as it was, soon faltered. Perhaps it had been doomed from the moment he put his canine-contaminated foot on my doorstep.

I wasn't put off by his clumsy error but maybe his own discomfort meant his heart wasn't really in it anymore. That's what I told myself, anyway. I don't know if we ever really had another date but I was to suffer my own humiliation a few weeks later. Still deeply enamoured, despite our apparent inability to communicate, I posted him a Valentine's Day card.

That snowy evening, after a sledging trip with friends, he delivered the devastating blow that it "just wasn't working".

It still makes me cringe to think of the heart-shaped card declaring my feelings dropping through his letterbox the next day.

At least I could console myself with the thought that I'd never unwittingly traipsed dog muck around someone's home.

The hateful smell remained for days in the house but I never revealed its shameful source to my perplexed parents.