Dogs
Do you have a dog? Are you a dog-lover like me?
Most of us do love our dogs don’t we?
Our local dogs play a very big part in our community.
Do you have a dog for company? If we live alone a dog can make all the difference can’t it? The dog parks and walking dogs is a great way to meet and chat with other humans too.
They provide a lot of security for us as home-owners too guarding the house when we’re out at work or away. And they’re great at alerting us if someone is out there.
And what a great job they do at keeping a whole lot of us exercised! We see dogs walking their owners all over the suburbs.
Our two local councils Moreton Bay and Brisbane both take a big interest in dog control especially barking dogs and providing facilities for dogs. If dogs get lost and are roaming the streets they are the people we can call to come and collect them or to phone if we are looking for our dog that has gone missing.
For some reason lost dogs love our house – we have had no fewer than four dogs land themselves on us asking to be rescued. I was quite cross with the owners of the most recent one that they didn’t call the council about it and come and get it from us. We were very sad to see it go off to the pound.
Our councils and local vets cooperate to microchip our dogs so they can be easily identified if lost. You can always contact a local vet to get a dog you have found identified. I know that now! Local vets are also a good place to start to find puppy-training classes and ensuring your dog is well-trained and well-behaved is going to be a big part of enjoying it.
What do you do with your dog when you go away? Moreton Bay Regional Council has just banned having dogs in caravan parks. This seems a shame to me. It makes it very hard for people to travel with even a little friendly dog. Queensland was always much more dog-friendly than some other states but now it seems it is becoming progressively more regulated.
So it leaves the question of whether to put your dog in a kennel or ask the neighbours to look after it or not have a dog because of the problem of what to do about it when you go away. We look after one of our neighbour’s little fluffy white dogs and it is a treat for us to have him every now and then. He always greets us like a great friend if we go there and if they stop by when she is walking he bounds up our stairs like he is at home.
Then there are the wonderful dogs who are seeing-eye dogs for the blind and the dogs who work for us in customs on farms and in the security industry.
Dogs certainly play a very valuable part in our lives.
However another aspect of dogs is something we often don’t like to admit to ourselves but is the dark secret of having dogs. Dogs bite and attack people.
Unfortunately the people most at risk of being bitten by dogs are children under the age of five and 6-10 year olds next. 81% of the attacks will occur in their own home. They are mostly bitten by the family’s own dog. 78% of those attacked are family or friends of the dog owners not some unwelcome intruders. These are horrific statistics.
Especially when we consider that most injuries to children are to their head and face. About 1200 children go to Brisbane hospitals each year because of dog attacks. There are 2500 dog attacks reported each year in Brisbane.
Apart from the real risk to toddlers’ lives the dog attacks are leaving children traumatised for life. Being attacked by a dog as a toddler can result in excessive fear and a belief that the world is a frightening place. It can leave people feeling quite helpless. Children can end up frightened of dogs all their lives. And unfortunately dogs sense when you are frightened of them and are more likely to attack.
When my son was little the people at the back had two Alsations to guard the woman against potential rapists that her husband feared. Unfortunately the dogs which were lovely dogs bit local little children. I mean really bit them. They bit one little child on the neck and drew blood. This is seriously dangerous stuff. Yet the dog owners were unable to admit what their dogs were doing.
This is the danger. We love our dogs and some breeds of dogs are very very dangerous. Often these are the breeds we love most: the staffordshire bull terriers the cattle dogs the german shepherds. These are declared dangerous breeds yet very popular. If we were talking about cat owners it would be as if we were choosing lions and tigers and leopards as our family pets.
Some of our dogs are also going feral for one reason for another interbreeding with dingos and running in packs in the forests. When I was a child stories about people travelling on sleighs through the snow in the forests in Russia were quite popular. The typical story involved packs of wolves chasing the sleigh in a desperate ride which hopefully ended with safety but reading the story you had the terror of the wolf-pack bringing down the people in the sleigh and eating them.
That could never have happened in Australia. We used to have no dangerous animals in our forests (maybe I should say except snakes and spiders and crocodiles and dingos!) and we could walk and camp out completely safely. Now there are quite a few dangerous feral species and packs of wild dogs are certainly among them.
Our dogs are an industry. They are an industry for vets product-providers and dog-food manufacturers. This is working fine at the moment and most dog owners accept the bills they will have to pay to keep a pet. What happens as the Christmas puppy gift grows into a big dog is not always such a happy story. A lot end up being put down by the council. What will happen as fuel prices rise and in the event of any further global economic downturns is also a question for our dogs. As we think through issues of global over-population and food security we might also think through what it means to provide food for all our pets.
For all of us who love dogs and for those who aren’t so keen on them these are some things to think about with our local dogs. I’ll leave you with it.