FROM A DOG.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4964, 19 February 1877, Page 3

FROM A DOG.

Bow-wow-wow ! Mr. Editor, are you listening to me? lam a distressed little doggie. I am perplexed with that nasty thing men call law. Now, isn’t it hard, sir ? Here are you and the police down upon us harrowing and howroushing, and a-drivingus to go and be registered ! Roll-up, roll-up, roll-up and be registered all ye dogs that eare for your skins, or if you don’t your skins will be turned into doormats to wipe people’s feet! I want the law of the matter, sir, and even dogs have their rights. I suppose the police are acting under the old law of the province of Wellington, called the Dog Nuisance Ordinance, 1863. Now, I am myself a harmless wee lady doggie, just as you see me now before your chair. I wouldn’t, unless I was very hungry, bark at a sheep or snarl at a pig. My name is “ Cricket,” and I have a little son whose name is “Snipe,” because a snipe has a long nose and he has a short one. Suppose now Sergeant Monaghan drives both of us to old Marriott, and we have not only to pay our five bob apiece, but we must have a “badge” stuck on our neck and our “number,” like a gaol-bird or a pauper in a workhouse, and that too though never having done a bad act or gone without a meal’s meat in our lives, having a kind master. What then ? We are both going on a visit to another part of the colony. Now suppose when we get there with this nasty badge and number stuck behind our ears a strange bobbie—not a bob—a bobbie, I say, comes up and says he, “Are you registered dog ?” “ All right,” I say. “ Let me see,” says he, “ not if I know it—this is only a Wellington badge, and you must be registered again, both you and that son of yours.” Now would’nt that be hard sir ? I thought we had got abolition, and that even we dogs were now to live under colonial laws for the future. The law says that if we “molest” live stock we are to be destroyed—destroyed ! just think of it! And after paying our five bob, if we go into another provincial district, and I bark at a pig, or “ Snipe” squints at a goose, we may be destroyed ! It’s hard, it’s hard ! I want Mr. Crawford to settle this little point, and if he won’t do so right off I’ll watch for him some night and take a good mouthful out of one of his calves and get my sou “ Snipe ” to do the same tor the other, and he’ll remember us believe you me ! You need’nt kick me out Mr. Editor—l’ll go—bow-wow-wow ! A Perplexed Little Doggie.