Open Writing

Don’t get me wrong. I like ‘em. They retrieve sticks. They lie on their backs and enjoy a good tummy rub. They can be trained to bring in the morning newspaper. They’ll gladly take you for a walk or a run in the morning. And they’ll gobble up dinner left overs, saving you an invasion of ants in the dustbin. But we all know deep down, that dogs are not the angels we make them out to be. They can be wayward – just like unchecked kids. I realized this one day in Accra, when Beezer waltzed into my living room with a dying Malachite Kingfisher in his chops. That dog could move like lightening when the mood took him. I was angry with him but what can you do? Dogs will be dogs. Beezer was just a bush dog and had no breeding, so to speak. So can you teach dogs manners?

Well yes. One of the first things they have to learn is to pee outside. And as puppies, they get lots of applause when that first jet hits the grass. A dog soon learns too that its other toilet habits are important to an owner’s mood. An unrequested parcel on the stoep earns a reprimand; in the garden it’s OK; but outside someone else’s gate? Now you’re performing Fido! Yup, we’ve all seen owners just walk on by with not even a tinge of guilt. Because that great pile has become someone else’s problem.

Now let’s not get too unreasonable here. I mean dogs aren’t daft but they ain’t clever enough to use flush lavatories and they have to answer the call of nature. So whose fault is it when an unexpected manure delivery arrives at the neighbour’s house? Not the dog’s surely? No, the “parents” must take the blame. People just won’t use a poop-scoop will they. Or not many. Instead our streets and parks are just covered in dog mess, and our beaches too (the first few hundred metres of Brenton Beach require one to have mastered at least the basics of the childhood game of hopscotch).

In a speech to the Accra Rotary Club in Ghana, I once created a hubbub by suggesting that the Ministry of Tourism needed to do something fast, to prevent village people defecating on the beach. It was as common as blowing one’s nose. “Disgusting” I hear you all say. True, but no more so, when you think about it, than dog dung.

In this day and age, all dog owners are being tarred with the same brush (unfortunately, as there are many who take their care responsibilities more seriously) and it is getting to the point where dog + owner can be social pariahs. If it isn’t the unwanted Christmas present on the lawn, left by a roaming animal, it’s the dog’s incessant barking. Now in a way, I can understand why he would want to bark when someone trots past his territory. But must they really woof or yap (there is a size issue here) all day, seemingly at nothing at all. Of course they must! They’re pining. They are left all day, sometimes in threes and fours, often without water, by people out earning. Sometimes the animals are left without company all weekend too, during which time their unruly noise would certainly constitute an infringement of the Noise Abatement Act (if we had one). And owners haven’t a clue what complainants are talking about. “Our dog? You must be joking. He’s quiet as a mouse!” Well he is now that you’ve deemed to join him for a few hours. Why is it that some dog owners are the last people on earth to understand that their lovable pooch might be a nuisance? Why is it that the complainant is always made to feel the guilty party; the Victor Meldrew? Perhaps such owners could be subjected to a new form of Chinese torture. A recording of their cheeky chappie “yap, yap, yaping” delivered through the front door letter box at 200 watts per channel while the household tries to sleep at night. Hmmm. There’s justice. That’ll give them a taste of their own medicine.

Speaking of justice, I wonder if there is any prospect of this for the 13 year old boy from Bloemfontein who only just escaped with his life recently after being mauled by four Boerboel-like dogs. He had been cycling to his sister’s house in a near neighbourhood and was attacked while the owner of the beasts stood idly by, doing nothing to come to the boy’s rescue. It was only by dint of the intervention of others (one bystander had to use a bakkie to bash one of the mountainous dogs off its victim) that the boy’s life was saved. While he lies in a Bloem hospital, who will pay his medical bills? And what of the dogs in question? Shouldn’t they be destroyed? Should the people who allowed the brutes out to reap such havoc, be prosecuted? The behaviour of dogs is more often than not, a reflection of what their owners want of them. That is why big softies like Boerboels can become killers in the wrong hands. Any one of us out for a casual walk could become dinner. It’s in our interests to lobby for protective legislation. Let me stress that I am not talking here about dogs which have a playful nip at your calf muscle as you cycle innocently by (as recently happened to me – I wasn’t sure if the owner of the dog was more shocked than me at her animal’s behaviour, but in her embarrassment, she readily agreed to reimburse the cost of my tetanus shot if not compensation for my lost Sunday). No, such dogs should not be given a humane stunner. But they are also a nuisance.

While we should feel for people who are hospitalised or otherwise injured by dangerous dogs, let us not forget that puny dogs too (those that didn’t invest in the canine equivalent of the Charles Atlas course) can get chewed up without so much as a by your leave. There are countless cases of huge “pets” killing or maiming smaller ones with no accompanying offending owner’s courtesy offer to help pay for vet fees.

Where does the answer lie? South Africa needs a Dangerous Dogs Act of the sort which exists in UK. In itself, this won’t halt owner ignorance, as the recent case of a little girl savaged and killed in Yorkshire by a pit bull (which had been kept in a cage), amply illustrates. But it will at least provide grounds for victims of attack to bring irresponsible dog ownership to book.

Now that the invasion from the north is at an end and holiday makers have returned to work, we are left in relative peace for a while. They will be reaquainting their unsocialised, often neurotic dogs to “see off” whoever walks by their other property. But they’ll be back with their unruly animals before too long. And there are increasing numbers of our own to join in the havoc when they do.