We are a canine village. Of course people outnumber dogs. But I doubt if the ratio is much above three to one. Like the rest of the country we favour Labradors and Jack Russells — most of which (or whom as their owners would say) are imaginatively called ‘Jack’. There is the occasional scuffle when incompatibles meet. My Buster was actually attacked by three inoffensive-looking golden retrievers who belong to an even more inoffensive-looking middle-aged lady, whose woolly hat creates a false sense of security. Fortunately, in my attempt to fend them off, I slipped and, by landing on Buster, both protected him from harm and won the reputation of a man who is prepared to risk his life to save his dog — or, at least, crush him to death rather than have him savaged.
However, most of us are conspicuously responsible owners. This means that we never fail to ‘pick up’ — maximum fine £200. The only time, during my 11 years in the village, when excrement was found on a footpath, it was denounced in uncompromising terms in the parish magazine and there was a tacit agreement among dog-owners that the offending animal must have been a stray from outside our boundaries.
Our determination to keep the streets clean survived the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire’s condemnation of faeces-collection as ‘unnatural’. Speaking at the nearby Buxton Festival she expressed her horror at the discovery that Baslow, barely three miles away, has special boxes in which the plastic bags of ordure can be deposited. Open disagreement with the Dowager Duchess is not in the village’s nature. That we have dared to defy her in this particular demonstrates what responsible owners we are.
Consider, therefore, how we reacted when we read in the parish magazine that two miscreants had been observed menacing pregnant cows. The force of the complaint was increased by the fact that it came from our own farmer — a man who enjoys universal respect. He also reported that when he told a lady in Bakewell to stop her dog chasing ducklings she replied that it was ‘doing no harm’.
One of my neighbours attributes the increase in anti-social behaviour to the Peak District National Park Authority’s encouragement of the conversion of barns into holiday cottages. Whatever the reason, the situation has suddenly deteriorated. Now a pet sheep has been killed. Contradictory rumours accuse a variety of owners. As was the case with the Paris Commune of 1871, fear of being found guilty when innocent promotes the temptation to excuse oneself by denouncing others.
One story suggests that the dogs which harassed the cows jumped through the kitchen window when frightened by thunder. The implausibility of that happening does not prevent us all wanting the explanation to be true. We would like to find some sort of excuse, no matter how tenuous, for the uncharacteristic behaviour. Nobody has mentioned Zoltan, Dracula’s dog in the B-movie, who came back to life when struck by lightning. But one question still arises. How does a village which hates unpleasantness deal with the canine fundamentalists who, unless they are brought under control, will continue to terrorise local livestock?
Our farmer — a man of conspicuous good temper — has published what amounts to a friendly warning, or perhaps no more than wise advice, in the parish magazine. Strong action, he reminds recent arrivals, is usually taken against dogs which kill sheep. No one can imagine him firing the shot. But up in the hills someone certainly would. A dog-loving village would find it hard to reconcile itself to the knowledge that, somewhere in our midst, a border collie — no matter how great its crime — had faced summary execution.
We believe that there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. So most of us would think that the gun had been pointed at the wrong target. That is a blatantly sentimental view. But what else can be expected from men who drive dangerously, not because they are looking at girls but because they are ogling dogs?
My mother — who believed that every dog she did not own was ill-treated or neglected, and probably both — would have marched up to the front door of the negligent owner’s house and announced that she was taking the offending dogs into protective custody. I do not have the nerve to follow her example. Anyway Buster would not like it. I suspect that he is less worried about the slaughter of the innocents than I am. He has grown so smug with the years that he neither identifies nor sympathises with other foundlings. No doubt, he is wondering why the border collies cannot be sensible like him and limit their murderous intentions to cats. In our village, the ratio of cats to people is about one to a hundred.
© Roy Hattersley 2006
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