Dogs and Dog-Spoilers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 933, 28 June 1957, Page 9

Dogs and Dog-Spoilers

by

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 5

wants to know at what point a barking dog becomes a public nuisance. He is, he assures me, a man of peace, and he likes dogs. He wants to live in harmony with his neighbours, who are, in fact, good neighbours and good citizens; and \ NORTH ISLAND reader

so far this has been achieved. But their dog is making harmony difficult.

What, within the limits of Christian behaviour, can be done? Why the question should have been addressed to me I don’t know, since it is clear that he is a better Christian than I am. If I offer sympathy only that will not help much, and if I recommend dealing with the dog, as Dr Johnson said he would deal with the Whigs ("Hit the fractious brutes on the head") I take him outside the limits of Christian conduct, All I can do is suggest that if the situation becomes desperate enough he should forget his

Christianity for ten minutes and take direct action, I. don’t remember that there is much sympathy for dogs in the Old Testament or the New, and there is sympathy for the sinner whose bur. dens are greater than he can bear. But when I recommend direct action 1 am not thinking of the dog. I am thinking of his owners and corrupters. Though dogs delight to bark and bite it is easy enough to cure them of those habits when they are indulged at the wrong time. Not to cure them is treachery to the dog-turning him loose into a world in which every man’s boot wil! be against him. Our boots should have another mark We should deal with dog spoilers as we ought to deal with child spoilers-cease pretending that we think their darlings amusing. How we do it must depend on the circumstances and the place; but it should be done It is-not a requirement of good citizenship that we should smile at public nuisances whether they run on four legs or on two; bark without ceasing or grizzle without ceasing; keep us awake with their yapping or use our hands or our clothes or our books as wipers for sticky fingers. ai ‘fa *-

JUNE 7

_ — --s | HAVE been thinking a good deal about that barking dog, and my thoughts have not been pleasant. There was, I think, a time when I liked all dogs, or all dogs of the breeds with which I was most familiar: sheepdogs and gundogs. Now I am ‘sharply aware

of the difference between dogs and dog. I can no longer say that I like all

dogs, or many dogs, or, in fact, any but the dog that is my daily companion I have had many dogs, and never any to which I did not become deeply attached; but they died one by one, as dogs do; each loss made me fess inclined to risk loss again, and mercifully -or unworthily?-less able to develop affection once more. I don’t know whether it is one of the changes due to age. one of the wounds of experience. or simply the running out of my supply of affection for dogs, which hes perhaps been smaller than I realised. Whatever the explanation is I am now a one-dog

owner and a one-dog lover, and well on the way to dislike of other dogs.

JUNE 8

AM told by Dr L. J. Wild that there is no justification for my dismal attitude to Red Poll cattle in New Zealand. The Red Poll, he says, is the only breed that competes every year at both the Smithfield Fat Stock and the London Dairy Shows, and some of the

results he has summarised for me indicate that it competes to some pur-

pose. I have, of course, not doubted that it is a useful as well as a beautiful breed-its colour alone is worth working for; but my belief still is that it has not been accepted in New Zealand. That belief was strengthened painfully at the dispersal sale of the Otahuna stud. I suppose it is the old problem of trying to kill two birds with one stone. My earliest acquaintance with dual purpose cows began when I had to milk two Shorthorns before going off to school; one of them usually tough as leather. They were, of course, not well bred or by today’s standards well fed. It was an accident that they were Shorthorns and not Ayrshires, but at that time a lucky accident. The Ayrshires in the neighbourhood were, I distinctly ‘remember, nervous, bad tempered, excitable, and so badly equipped underneath that’ even my small hands were too big by half for comfortable milking. My father chose ShorthornsI am not sure that he ever saw a Friesian-because there was something to hold during the operating of milking and something to eat if the milk failed or was too difficult to extract. It was many years before I saw a_ pedigree herd of milking Shorthorns, or knew that this had become a special breed. Now I wonder if it is a special breed, as I wonder sometimes about the separate identity of Corriedale sheep. In both cases the pull back to the ancestors is too strong for any but ruthless cullers, and eternally vigilant selectors, and I imagine that Red Polls are no safer. or not much safer, than other dual purpose animals. In any case, New Zealand shows’ no great enthusiasm for such trials. Our farmers breed for beef or for milk, but only in a small percentage of cases for both simultaneously. lf dairy farmers are persuaded to use beef bulls where it is not intended to add the ealves to the milking herd, there may be a new opportunity for Red Polls; but the result of that experiment could easily be the deliberate neglect of milk for meat. (To be continued)