Saturday 2 November 2013

It's a dog's life hating dogs

This is a big weekend in Melbourne and not just because it’s the start of the spring racing season. This is the weekend when the by-laws change and the new summer rules come in. The main one as far as I’m concerned is the one that stops dogs being off leash on beaches. I’ll be honest, I don’t like dogs and if my daughter ever asks for one, I can only hope it’s the stuffed or porcelain variety she’s after.

I reached a ripe old age not realising that people like to take dogs onto beaches early in the day with one of those silly plastic things that flings a ball a great distance. But my daughter is 22 months old now and over Spring she developed an engineering skill that has led to towers being built out of bricks at home and sandcastles at the beach.

So on the few occasions when the mercury rose above 20c these past few months, we’ve headed down to the beaches around St Kilda to see if we could recreate Dublin Castle. As my daughter has not yet realised that Saturday mornings are for sleeping, we’ve tended to arrive at the beach at the same time as those early morning dog walkers. We would just get ourselves settled and have the first sand based construction ready when a leashless fido would come bounding over, tongue dangling and tail wagging and make a bee-line for the castle or my daughter. Seconds later, our hard work would be demolished under a torrent of hooves while a nonchalant owner would watch from 20 meters away, telling us that “Samson is very friendly and loves kids”. It never seems to occur to them that the kid may not like Samson.

My daughter likes dogs but even she doesn’t enjoy being bailed over by an Alsatian running at full pelt. Once, a dog stopped and had a pee on top of our sandcastle while his middle aged, well dressed owner chuckled and told us what a frisky little thing her mutt was.

Incidents like this happened every time we went to the beach over winter. None of the owners ever apologised and some even got irate if I was a little two vigorous is shoeing their canine away. One even mentioned that we should stay away from beaches if we didn’t want untrained dogs bounding up to toddlers.

Thankfully that all changes this weekend when summer regulations come into force and dogs aren’t allowed on beaches. Mind you it will be interesting to see how it’s enforced. Dogs aren’t supposed to be within 50 metres of a playground but that doesn’t seem to stop them. Playgrounds tend to be in parks and that’s the other favourite haunt of dog owners keen to show off the athletic prowess of their pets.

I’m not generally a fan of Frankie Boyle but when he says that dog owners are people who have failed to find love within their own species, I have to say I agree to some extent. This will upset many of my friends who are fans of four legged fanged animals and I’m sorry about that but I have to come clean. I’ve hated dogs for as long as I can remember. It started out as raw fear but as the years went on and I realised that I wasn’t going to be bitten by every mutt I came across, I developed a dislike for the smell of dogs and the drool that seems to permanently seep from their puss filled mouths. And on the few occasions when I’ve been eager to impress someone and have been forced to pet one of their pets the feeling of their rib cage expanding gives me the hibbee geebies.

I trace all this back to a little spaniel called Penny that I had the misfortune to bump into at the age of four. I was four I should point out. I’m not very good with dog ages. I grew up on a rough street where the favourite pastime for anyone under the age of ten was to tease the pets belonging to the posh people who lived around the corner. Penny was allowed to run around their garden which was ringed by a small wall. She was an angry dog who would run towards any passer-by and yap incessantly. Each time she did this, she would leap up on the wall in a vain attempt to get at the imposter. But she was never able to breach the barrier.

That of course was a source of great amusement to us kids. So when we weren’t playing dare on the railway line we’d head down to Penny’s house and tease the hell out of her. We’d line up at the wall to her garden and shout at her until she came charging over. Each time we’d retreat in a gale of nervous laughter until we realised she had failed to leap the wall again.

We would return each time and increase the intensity of our teasing. This of course made the little mutt very angry and on one fateful summer day she found energy she didn’t know she had. Suddenly she was on our side of the wall and heading for us at a rapid rate.

We turned and ran and it was then that I had a terrible realisation. I’d spent my short life until then trying to be cool and the best way to do this was to hang around with older kids. And so I found myself as the youngest person in that fleeing possie and by a long way the slowest. Even as I type this I’m having flashbacks to those fangs sinking in to my backside.

Since that day, I’ve avoided dogs like the plague. I’ll let my kid make up her own mind while reminding her that teasing angry animals is generally not a good idea.

I’m glad I got that off my chest. But don’t get me started on cats.