On getting angry about cultural mistrust of dogs

I’m going to break the middle class code of never critiquing another culture’s habits in case I offend anyone, because I am offended, actually.

This country has a long and proud history as a nation of dog lovers. So, therefore, we, as a nation, need to get on board with this charming national characteristic and stop acting like walking a dog in the street is akin to walking a steaming turd on legs, as is happening in some towns and cities across the UK from people who may be less aware of our noble heritage.

I know some people are irresponsible dog owners who let their dogs crap on the street or in the park without clearing it up and it’s disgusting. I’m not one of those people.  I do appreciate the privilege of being able to own a dog in a tolerant and often green-enough city that enables me to exercise him and give him a good standard of living. But I worry that this city – particularly the area where I live – Tower Hamlets –  is becoming less tolerant of my right to own, exercise – and clean up after –  my dog.

This is the borough where signs went up recently in a local park following an election that is widely regarded as being corrupt, stating dogs were now banned because the area was Muslim and Muslim people don’t like dogs. Don’t get me wrong. Those guys are having a tough enough time of it as it is right now, without me giving them a piece of my mind. But try to control my right to walk my dog in a park near me and this means war. The signs (paper, not wrought iron or anything) have now been removed, but in an area of major cultural diversity, I get a distinct whiff of anti-dogist sentiment left, right and centre. Hijabbed women cross the street to avoid my dog. Bearded men swerve to avert the unlikely potential of a nipped ankle. Bus drivers have actively prevented me boarding with my dog. Kids – mainly brown and often headscarfed, have cringed away from him as if my little pint-sized pug is about to bite their heads off. I know some cultures have their own reasons for disliking dogs, and generally, I’m okay with that. We had a black maths tutor come over to our house to our house on Monday to give the kids a little extra coaching, and I remembered how I’ve often noticed a cultural fear of dogs among some of the black community. Not all, I hastily add with white, middle-class, female angst. I know plenty of black and brown people who love dogs. But a pointed minority don’t, in my experience, depending on their cultural background. So I texted this tutor before he came, just in case, to warn him that we had a small dog. He thanked me for the warning, and when he arrived, this easy-going man mountain was definitely wary of little old Johnny the pug, so we locked him upstairs in the bedroom where he promptly did a dirty protest – the dog. Not the tutor. I get it. Some people just don’t like dogs. And some dogs don’t like to be temporarily imprisoned.

It’s not always non-white people who take offence to him.

Only this week, a white guy, clearly at the end of his tether, veered angrily to avoid Johnny on the way to school, as if he’d been attacked, despite the fact that I had the dog on a short lead. I turned to stare at the man as he leapt out of the way – despite many non dog-owners apparent belief that I can control my dog through sheer willpower alone, he does have a mind of his own – not to mention a sense of smell that will often having him straining at the lead to get to a piece of someone’s dropped fried chicken leg (which, I may add, may kill my dog if he tries to eat it, so pick it the fuck up – I PICK UP my dog’s SHIT so YOU don’t step in it) while he rattled off a list of semi-lucid stream-of consciousness reasons why he was on the edge right now, including a close family member cutting herself, to which I remarked, somewhat callously, as I was pretty much minding my own business, “I’m sorry mate, but none of those things are my dog’s fault, whereupon he shouted WHY DOES NOONE CARE?? as I turned tail to follow the kids on their scooters.

But mainly it is.

So when, today, I saw a brown man with his daughter wearing a headscarf  – I’m not going to make assumptions about their cultural heritage – with a rock in his hand, aimed at my pug, my blood boiled. It’s not the first time a person of Asian descent has tried to assault my dog. When Johnny was just a little-little puppy – maybe just 15 weeks old, a teenage guy with a massive attitude problem tried to kick him simply for crossing his path. My response then was the same as it was this time around: I screeched “How DARE you threaten my dog. He’s just a puppy”, despite Johnny being, now, a little over one year old. I was venting the steam of apologising for my dog for being a dog many times on every walk that we take.

Granted, this time around, I wasn’t paying full attention to the puglet. Now that he’s no longer “just a puppy,” I let him off the lead from time to time. Normally, he follows obediently and comes when called, especially if there is a treat at the end of it, except if there’s a dog he is particularly interested in chasing. But, today, I only have time for a quick walk in the morning, so I want to let him have the chance to have a good sniff around without having to stop every time he wees against a tree.

I was on something of a power march to get home as I still had to get the kids out for school and myself to work, so when Johnny gambolled across the mud of the eco park behind my home toward the father of the pair, who were hurrying to get to wherever, I took little notice, knowing he would catch up with me again at a flappy-eared pace.

However, when I heard shouting, I turned to see the dog hater poised with rock in hand (it might have been a pebble, but it was definitely a projectile missile of sorts). At my outrage, he railed at me for failing to control my dog; I yelled at him that “the dog wouldn’t chase you if you didn’t run away” and I nearly found myself on the verge of a UKIP-style speech about England being a nation of dog lovers, before I stopped myself, with Johnny now obediently trotting to heel, seething, mainly at myself, all the way home.

The problem is, Johnny can literally smell the fear. And with his puppyish sense of mischief and puggish lack of judgement, he tends to really go for it when he thinks people are afraid of him. I have in no way encouraged this behaviour, but all the cringing and the banishing and the running away has acted like a red rag to a bull. My pug has become a bit of a racist. He will often strain the lead, trying to follow a hijab as if he were sniffing out a bone. He will bark incessantly at black people on the bus, watching them scatter in fear with waggish bemusement. He also goes mad for people wearing colourful trainers too, and skateboards, so his discrimination is not solely linked to race, I hasten to add. But it’s definitely there, so much that frankly, it’s embarrassing.

But perhaps this behaviour is his reaction to the fact some people are dogists (by which I mean anti-dog of course). I know his bark is worse than his bite, which is not to say that they know that, but the fear seems somehow innate, or at least certainly entrenched in some cultures by mothers visibly herding their children away from the faintest brush with a four-legged beast.  Johnny really never does anything to the people who fear him – except, perhaps look for a reaction that he’s previously experienced, which is running away, which of course he interprets as “chase me”. Because he’s a dog. Which is also the reason that he’s not really racist.

There comes a time when people really need to live and let live. I will be respectful of your cultural dislike of dogs, and do my best to keep him away from you however irrational I may ignorantly assume your fear to be, if you don’t threaten my pup with a rock or your foot because he deigned to sniff your feet or cross your path.  He’s not a pit bull. Or a black cat for that matter. Because then it’s totally okay to cross the road. If you’re a total moron. They’re called pets for a reason.

PS. Dog owners of Tower Hamlets should be aware of new proposals for dog management and control in the borough from the same dubiously elected council – which include notice of a proposal to order people to put dogs on a lead. Might be worth a look for anyone – like me – who fears dogs could soon considered anti-social simply because some people in the wider community don’t like them.