Dispatches From the Sofa by Frank Skinner

Author:Frank Skinner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446493861
Publisher: Random House

How to kill a dog with your bare hands, and other childhood memories

12 MARCH 2010

I WAS DRIVING through West London, this week, when I saw a young man walking a Rottweiler. I’d read several articles about new measures to control dangerous dogs that day, so I watched the pair carefully as I sat at traffic lights. One shouldn’t, I know, judge a book by its cover but if I’d been driving around the streets desperately searching for someone to partner me on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and this man and his dog were all I could find, I don’t think it would have much mattered which end of the lead I’d chosen from. I don’t like to dismiss someone as an idiot without good evidence but, as there were quite a few unused holes on the adjustable band of his baseball cap, it seemed clear that this was a man whose brain didn’t require much storage space. I’d seen this type out with big dogs before. The scary dog is the modern-day equivalent of the codpiece. The owner is endeavouring to tell the world how strong and virile he is. ‘I’m an idiot’, however, tends to be the banner headline. The man was eating sweets. I couldn’t help thinking that if they were aniseed balls, the problem might soon solve itself.

Pedantic dog-lovers will point out that the Rottweiler is not actually classed as a dangerous dog. However, these same people will tell you their dog understands every word they say, so their opinion is obviously null and void. I’d say every dog is potentially dangerous. I used to have a cute little mongrel who bit me about 25 times. Admittedly these incidents were largely the result of me wrestling with him, tapping him on the nose or refusing to hand over his ball but then surely one of the joys of dog-ownership is aggravating your pet to the point of snarling retaliation and then drawing back before it tears you to pieces. Nevertheless, any animal with teeth and claws is capable of doing completely unprovoked damage. Even on satellite TV’s The Dog Whisperer – a show about a world famous dog-training expert – blood is sometimes drawn. To single out certain breeds seems like a form of dog racism. However, I think these current proposals – to microchip every dog and to make third party insurance compulsory for every dog-owner – aren’t quite right. When I was a kid, everyone had to buy a licence for their dog. It was seven-shillings-and-sixpence and, no, it wasn’t cheaper if the dog was black-and-white. Maybe dog licences should be reintroduced and the government could come up with a method for not issuing them to idiots. I think one can generally tell just by looking. Isn’t that the rule-of-thumb they use when issuing firearms licences? What’s the difference? It’s all about not trusting idiots to handle dangerous things.

People had very different attitudes to dogs when I was a kid in the Black Country and I think we could learn from them.

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