Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Dogs of War

Ever since I was a small child I have had a rather ambivalent relationship with dogs—but in those days at least where I lived dogs were treated differently than the general pampering they get now. Back then the dog assimilated into the family—they ran wild around the streets growing benignly with children. The dogs around our place took on the general likeness of the family and sitting at the garden gate—they often appeared allegorically to express the personality of the family who owned them. All our dogs adopted the surnames of their owners thus we had Kim Young a likable little mongrel who changed personality once you got by the front doorstep—and we had Darkie Larkin who was dark and a great barker but you might only pet him once—if you valued your hand. We also had the never to be petted Spot Heffernan and another little thing called Patch White who was white and that seemed to fit perfectly. We used to play games by opening and shutting gates corralling our dogs like the cattle in the cowboy films. Alas perhaps my new found problem relates to an incident when I was about four whilst riding my tricycle and a neighbouring dog took a bite of my thigh as I rode by—it was a horrible invasive feeling to feel his teeth break my skin. Yet years later we got our own little dog –he was called Sam a delightful little cross between a sheep dog and some mongrel that had made it false promises. He was a great little fella full of tail wags and affection. Sam was really intelligent also if I brought him for a walk to Killiney beach he would stop suddenly and investigate what turned out to be my mother’s car parked at the dart station. Years later when I moved to new estate near my mother’s he would suddenly appear looking in the window whilst I watched television—he was really my brothers dog but he knew us and he loved and was loyal to us all. There is a problem though you see when my mother moved house all those years ago—Sam moved to his new environment without fuss—but he took an instant dislike to the postman and when the poor fella came delivering our letters Sam would growl-that deep doggy growl that we all know comes directly from the wolf. Whoever was close by might tell him to stop and laughingly tell the uncomfortable postman—'that he is grand really and he would never bite.' In that last passage of play lies the problem with dogs-and the main problem with dogs is the stupidity and selfishness of the dog owner. Dogs are no longer the child’s best friend who go exploring the world alongside their beloved companions—as described so often literature the dog that swam lakes-or disarmed thugs to save the kid—no now with the advent of neo-liberal social dogma,the dog has become an adult plaything. I am convinced people use then to replace some sort of lost emotion-and it is not hard to figure really considering that our sole purpose is to create wealth and if we can’t do that for any reason we become the runts of society. Men and women have adopted different attitudes to dogs with women favouring the smaller cuddly dogs they can dance with or put clothes on and see if they fit. Men prefer the hunting companion and they like a good hound—and whilst the boxer breed is still popular I detect a worrying trend in the arrival of the Alaskan Husky whom I am sure would be more at home in Alaska but there you go. So where is my problem with all of this I hear you scream everyone loves dogs and so what if you need a companion---how bad is that? Well let me explain I will leave the disgusting and dangerous amount of dog shit left on our pathways, fields, beaches and parks and other amenities to share with you the crucial point of my thesis which is true to my own personal experience. I had a heart-by pass when I was 46 in 2005—and luckily for me I made a decent recovery I had also been diagnosed with type two diabetes so exercise was suggested as a cure—or at least as a good way of keeping this horrible disease under control. So walk I did in what was my beautiful local park in Shankill—this is before I moved to West Cork. So off I went gradually building up my confidence from a short worrisome walk to really power walking which helped me both re-build my mental and physical strength—I got really good at this walking lark until I could walk a few km’s in a very reasonable time. I was doing really well the only problem I experienced was that for some reason one of the medications I was taking made sound seem a little distorted—it was uncomfortable to hear the loud screech of an engine—or a bird calling to another-sometimes a leaf falling from a tree would be more like the sound of a bowling ball than a leaf. You guessed it—then I went to war with dogs, a particularly nasty little black thing that lived in St Anne’s park took a partial dislike to me and a complete dislike to my recovery. He would come a barking and a growling as I heroically walked by—but then even worse a boxer dog who couldn’t understand how such a an undeserving specimen as I had survived open heart surgery had a go also—till I had to stop one day—frozen by a sudden and explicable fear. I asked the lady owner to control her dog and she then lazily and only half apologising at the interruption of my power walk, said casually, ‘She doesn’t like your hat!’ I spent sometime later wondering firstly about hats and then about dog owners and the way they form logic—how could a human know for sure what a dog is thinking—do dogs think in that way—why wasn’t the dog on a lead? There are signs up at all the entrances to Shankill park regarding leads—they hadn’t then but they have their own dog walking area now. I digress, I now have a mental image of people walking the stupid mutts in these enclosures—perhaps if they put the owners in the pens and allowed the dogs open and close the gate? Here in Courtmacsherry there are not the same amount of dogs as you get in urban areas—indeed when I lived here first time round I rarely met any dogs whilst walking. Although the footpaths in Cobh are fouled with dog excrement I didn’t have any major run in with dogs when I lived there. Recently while out the walkway I met a limping stray dog who came towards me with great speed and purpose—of course I stopped my power-walking and went rigid. However this dog whom I can only describe as a cross between a brown bear and an Alsatian, took a shine to me and on the way back to the village for once I got a chance to tell a local female dog walker that he was alright and that his bark was worse than his bite— and that he wasn’t about to devour her and the two whippets she walked. So the dogs of war—each day a small dog attacks me from the stable yard beyond the hotel—but it is the beach car-park where I have most problems. People pull in here and lazily sit in their cars. They then allow Fido piss and crap with impunity in what is one of our beauty spots—three times I have been barked at growled upon and chased by dogs there, and on the beach itself. Maybe only fellow survivors of open heart surgery will fully understand the extent of the anxiety these invasive attacks on the person causes. Perhaps only true dog-lovers really want this nonsense to continue where dogs are more valued than people, as all of this is a true account. A little dog came a growling and a biting recently as I chilled out. Feeling the wind blow across the waves in one of the most beautiful places on earth, rigid me called to the owner wondering why her dog wasn’t under control.You got it her reply referred once more to my hat—and I have now declared war on dogs and their owners.

No comments:

Post a Comment