verging_on_random

Dogs

April 20, 2007 on 12:57 pm | In Uncategorized |

I haven’t had any nasty dog encounters for a while but the average got back to normal today with two separate incidents. Both involved border collies who couldn’t resist the lure of a lone jogger on an empty beach. I blame violent video games - I think these animals had been playing far too much Fraser Island Dingoes.

The owners of the dogs stayed at a prudent distance in the dunes on both occasions, whistling and screeching and being comprehensively ignored by their loathsome pets. If I had bothered to go and confront them I’m sure I would have been assured that (a) their dogs weren’t usually like this, (b) they’d never done anything like it before and (c) they wouldn’t have bitten me. Yeah sure love, pull the other one.

In the USA, 1,000 people per day need treatment for dog-caused injuries in hospital casualty wards. In Australia, one dog in 38 causes an injury requiring hospital attention. On very old data ‘it has been estimated that Australian hospitals treat approximately 30,000 dog attack victims each year‘ which is roughly consistent with the American experience after adjusting for population. That’s just hospitals - god knows how many more get treated by local GPs, nurses, first-aid officers and the like. Yet most dog-owners look at you in wide-eyed innocence and swear that their darling puppy wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Many Australians look upon dogs the way Americans think about guns: the only way you’ll take their leash is out of their dead right hand. Except most of them won’t use leashes, regarding them as an unwarranted intrusion on their dogs’ personal liberty. Leashes are a breach of the second amendment to the constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to be accompanied anywhere they like by large aggressive canines and anyone who objects can go fuck themselves.

In my time up here I’ve seen a dog terrorise a female Japanese tourist by jumping all over her while she was trying to sunbake, while the owners told her it was ‘just playing’ and I’ve observed an unleashed doberman getting up to snarl every time someone came within 100 metres whereupon the beach fisherman owner would give a snarl that was marginally less attractive than the dog’s and kick it until it sat down again, which meant it was only a matter of time before he was preoccupied with something or other and the dog got away to do some damage. I’ve watched dogs shit on pathways while their owners smile indulgently and proceed to sweep sand over the turds so the next barefoot unfortunates who walk along won’t even see them before they tread in them. Moronic women merrily hold the gate to the nature reserve open for their frolicking mongrels, sneering at the ‘NO DOGS’ sign under their noses. If you remonstrate that the scent of dogs prevents native animals from breeding, which is the purpose of the nature reserve, they give you a pitying look and say their beloved doggies ‘aren’t doing any harm’. On more occasions than I can count while out jogging I’ve had to freeze until the pathetic owner of a crazed snarling dog came up panting to grab it, while going through the usual ‘isn’t usually like this/wouldn’t have bitten you’ bullshit.

This minority of dog worshippers either don’t care about the misery their wretched animals cause for other people or they are so besotted they refuse to see it. As a result of their actions dogs have been effectively banned from public places in cities and a good job too. The sooner it happens here the better.