I hate dogs.........or dog-owners!

Yet another small child killed by some idiot’s dog, a bull-mastiff. A four-year old this time; a few days ago serious injuries were inflicted by a dog, also a bull mastiff,  that attacked a 5 and a 3-year old. Earlier an 8-year old had been attacked by a pair of bulldogs.

 

Latest statistics indicate that there are 28,000 dog-inflicted facial bites a year with 19,000 needing plastic surgery. There are about 100 serious dog attacks every week. Amongst children they are more common than measles, whooping cough and mumps combined.

 

The most susceptible are 2-year olds. Who in their right mind leaves a 2-year old alone with a large dog?

 

The commonest culprits are pit-bulls and Rottweilers. No surprise there, then, but just who are social misfits who think that these are OK as family pets?

 

A man in my neighbourhood owned two Rottweillers, which were sufficiently unruly to be kept in a pen. They escaped and killed over 30 sheep. About the same time another Rottweiller got amongst the sheep, killing many before the farmer despatched it with an iron bar.

 

This is not a dog problem; it’s a people problem. The dog is not the main menace; it’s the owner.

 

There is a strong tendency amongst dog owners to be selfish, irresponsible, dirty and liable to go ballistic at the slightest criticism of his adored mutt or any suggestion that dogs don’t exactly have the right to roam where they please or that ‘dogs rights’ should be in any way restricted. We had recently a tremendous kerfuffle when the local Council banned dogs from the children’s play-areas in a park.

 

Part of the coast near my home is one of the very few breeding grounds for the Arctic tern. Every year an area of the shingle beach is taped-off, reading ‘birds breeding; keep out’. Between April and August all dogs must be on a lead within surrounding nature reserve to protect the ground-nesting birds – oyster catchers, little terns etc.

 

Dog owners will not be put upon; dogs have rights, OK? So they duck under the tape, let the dogs loose, and then wonder why they are mobbed by a mass of angry Arctic terns. They beat a very rapid retreat covered in tern-poo. The joys of schadenfreude when I am watching!

 

Dirty? Irresponsible/ Anti-social?

 

All of the above.

 

I watched an old guy walking his dog along a busy town centre footpath. He paused to allow the mongrel to deposit a load of liquid crap on the pavement, not even bothering to put the dog in the gutter. This is not an aberration. The quiet country lane by my house once qualified as the dog-poo capital of Britain because of neighbours owning large dogs free to drop their enormous deposits at will (except in the owner’s garden). Recently the owners have either moved on or gone to the great Battersea Dogs Home in the sky, so it is no longer a problem.

 

The problem is that there are just too many damned dogs. I have seen a driver load 6 wet, muddy and very large dogs into the back of his brand-new Jag. It is not uncommon to see dog-walkers with 3 leads in each hand.

 

There are solutions.

 

I once worked in an African city where, for rabies-control, dog-ownership had restrictions. You were allowed to own only two dogs or one bitch, and not one of each. Dogs were licensed, the fee was realistic and the licence was a coloured tag attached to the dog’s collar. The colour indicated whether the licence was current. Any dog loose in a public place not wearing a current licence was shot on the spot.