[Purple]

Let's clear up this dog fight

Tensions are rising between dog-lovers and dog-haters - and the haters are winning

Janice Turner

Most days I see a certain teenager walk his dog through the park. Never on a lead, it waddles beside him as macho, musclebound and menacing as its scrawny owner aspires to be. When it squats to crap, the boy looks away, puffing on his roll-up. No one tells him to clear up, not even the bolshie matrons at the swings, certainly not other dog folk who never, in my experience, police their own. I can't tell whether it's a “pitbull type”, as proscribed vaguely and uselessly by the Dangerous Dogs Act or just a Staffordshire or an English bull terrier, whose kind will next week grace Crufts.

Anyway, it isn't the breed of dog but the breeding of the owner that makes the park fearful. A hoody with a nasty mutt is a cliché of urban unease, encapsulating feral “chavs”, Dave's “broken society”, gang battles, terrorised streets and rag-doll bodies of tiny ghosts: Cadey-Lee Deacon, Archie-Lee Hirst, Ellie Lawrenson.

The Lib Dems are backing a cert this week in their demand for a review of dog legislation. Nothing is more guaranteed to raise the nation's hackles, provoke unhinged opinions, eventually resulting in colander-like laws. While there are 11 million dog owners - a powerful lobby - I'd bet these are equalled if not exceeded by dog-haters. Now the tobacco ban has routed the smokers, the doggy folk are next in line. The outraged and self-righteous have changed focus. Every new terrible dog attack becomes a conduit for wider prejudice: ban more breeds, bring back licences, castrate the lot - and their owners! And here I'm quoting the genteel readers of Times Online.

The problem is that nothing draconian works. The Dangerous Dogs Act merely banned three particularly scary fighting breeds plus those found to have pitbull characteristics. Which is like saying you have a “Ross Kemp-type” husband if he is burly and bald: temperament and behaviour are not taken into account. And so respectable owners cannot, as the Kennel Club wishes, voluntarily register their animals and promise to control them. Instead they risk, at any time, their dogs being snatched and then having to prove to a court they are not dangerous. It does not stop pitbulls being bred and sold (you could buy a pup online today for £350) but means that many will be concealed from the law, kept mostly indoors, unsocialised, pent-up and potentially more vicious.

Background
Warning over youth gangs using savage dogs
One-year-old boy killed by rottweiler
Cleared but facing ‘life sentence of regret’
Besides, the three children named above were all killed by rottweilers, which aren't proscribed by the Act and, even if they were, the bad-asses would quickly move into Staffies or mastiffs or German shepherds, which just as surely can be goaded into brutality. Indeed no dog is truly wholesome: Isabelle Dinoire had the world's first facial transplant after her nose, lips and chin were chewed off by her labrador, despite all that breed's soft-mouthed, blind-assisting, toilet-roll-unravelling PR.

So bring back the dog licence! And not at the quaint 37p but something punitive: £50, £100, £500... Except that only 40 per cent of owners ever had one when it was abolished in 1987. And those possessed of devil dogs are unlikely to queue patiently at the Post Office. And even if they fail to comply they are unlikely to be punished: current law insists that all dogs must wear a collar and tag, but police don't have the manpower to chase naked mutts. Even the omnipresent signs threatening owners with fines for not scooping their poop are almost worthless. Last year 3,731 dog-fouling penalties were issued across the entire country: more unbagged turds are squeezed out in London parks every single day.

Besides, is this plan not merely a licence to hate? Do you really want to bankrupt an old lady for the company of her arthritic pug? It depends whether, when watching a dog gambol through a wood, you behold a joyous, innocent, unjaded, furry scrap of life or crapping machine about to menace your toddler. Are owners merely doughty folk enjoying care and companionship or selfish saddos who see green spaces only as potential toilets? There is no middle way. Our capacity to live and let live, to tolerate the behaviour of others, is diminishing, even if their actions impinge only marginally on our own.

And a new type of dog owner has emerged who, just like the hated hoodies, buys animals for street status - except the desired effect is not terror but envy at their vogueish good taste. A lap-rat suggests you are high maintenance but worth it; a labradoodle that you are quirky, leisured and rich. With their natty doggy accessories and 40m retractable leads tripping you up on the pavement, these dogs are ego-extensions to which all human courtesies must be granted. A friend suggested we drink our coffee outside the café (it was January) rather than leave her terrier lonesome outside. Paying at a till in Habitat recently, I shooed a lurcher who was snuffling through my shopping to receive a laser glare from its owner. She reminded me of a certain type of new parent who changes a nappy near the supper table then gets peeved when you retch.

So parents and dog owners, both puffed up with entitlement, are at war over our public spaces. And the dog-haters are winning. Camden council tried to prevent dogs from running unleashed in all of its parks, Westminster is aiming at the same. From today, thanks to Wansbeck council, dog walkers on Newbiggin beach will be banned at all times of year. Other beaches are set to follow. In my South London 'hood, Goose Green, a tiny sward of open land was made dog-free for one summer, in which picnics didn't end with parents cleaning the latticed underside of trainers with a stick. Then the dog lobby fought back, argued that once children and dogs shared this land. The ban was quashed, parental fury boils over, picnics cancelled.

It is difficult to broker a peace. A pitbull owner - suburban, college-educated - tells me, while she knows the breed is “too much dog” for most, and she'd never ever leave him alone with children, her own animal is a daffy, loving baby. In the park, as I wipe my stinking running shoes on a verge, I glare at a random passing dog owner. Not my fault, she says, pulling Tesco bags from her special ghastly dog-walking coat.

But the prevailing logic is that the only way to keep out poopers is also to ban the scoopers. The challenge of legislative reform is how to punish the bad doggies without prejudice burning down the whole damn kennel.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle3463302.ece

[buddysmom]

I love this. Not perfect but awfully darn close. Thanks for posting. The London Times is the greatest newspaper in the world.