Dogged
Sir: A few months ago Mr Daniel Farson wrote in the Spectator in defence of dogs. He rebuked Mr Bernard Levin for his anticanine arguments and paraded the usefulness of some dogs. In the light of my own experience I wonder how many people are having the whole quality of their life lowered because of these animals.
I worked hard until my retirement and looked forward with pleasurable contemplation to the enjoyment of my garden, my reading and my music, with other keen interests. I had reckoned without the great god Dog. My neighbour owns four dogs, two big and two small. The labrador makes a huge menacing noise; the collie has a shrill staccato bark alternating with paroxysms of hysterical screaming. The smaller animals provide a chorus. They all possess incredibly sharp hearing, and although I am a quiet man every sound that I make evokes an angry response. Switching a light on or off in a back room, drawing a curtain, opening or closing a window, running water. in the bathroom, washing crockery, closing a cupboard door, an occasional cough, the chink of a knife or fork on a plate, the conversation of a visitor: all are resented by the dogs. I cannot in any room in my house escape from this cause and effect, because these dogs, which might be suitable guards at an isolated dwelling or fartn, are distressingly unsuitable as household pets in a suburban semi-detached. I am by no means the sole victim. Owners of neighbouring gardens, and their children, are barked at when they dare to venture therein. Whenever I go into my own garden the four dogs create a deafening hullabaloo which is sustained until withdraw. So much for my gardening hopes! Dustrnen, postmen, window cleaners, and men doing a temporary repair job all evoke a noisy response. I have been awakened at many times in the night apd early morning by barking; and an afternoon nap is out of the question.
The worst infliction is the destruction of my pleasure in gramophone records, radio and television. No matter how low the volume of sound, it is heard by the dogs whether they be indoors or out, and they bellow with wrath. Since music, like reading, is a relaxation, the disturbance is shattering. The owner is not, I imagine, actuated by any feeling of hostility; she appears to be serenely content with the noise they make, and complaints have had no effect. Dogs, it is clear, however, are as their owners wish them to be: be they required to chase hares, foxes, deer, or even humans, they will oblige. Left to themselves, in a pack they will attack anything smaller or weaker, anything running or fugitive; they will kill sheep and sometimes children. When I was a child my pet rabbit was killed by a dog; when I was a young man my pet kitten was injured by a dog and had to be destroyed. And dogs attacked and killed Mr Auberon Waugh's aged goose.
I admire Mr Gale's writings and am sorry that he does not like cats.. The least admirable traits of the cat are enormously outweighed by its overwhelming superiority to the dog, whose worst habits are too unpleasant to begone into here.
E. L. Elliott 14 Herbert Road, Wimbledon, London SW19
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