Control your dogs!

2008-10-10 08:50

Georgina Guedes

I have always been more of a cat person than a dog person. I like the way that they're cuddly without being all-elbows, the fact that they don't slobber and the way that they love me without being needy.

But, for the last few years, I have shared my home and my life with a collie cross Labrador called Bella, and she has turned me around on dogs - specifically larger, intelligent, non-drooling dogs. And she makes up for her neediness by being such a clown that she melts my heart a thousand times every day.

Even the hardened cat lovers whom I still count among my friends have admitted to liking not all dogs, but Bella, after she lovingly presented them with her toy piggy - a squeaky, fluffy toy that has to be replenished every few months or so when loving turns to nibbling and cotton-wool intestines are bled all over the lounge.

Bella gets a walk every day in our local park, and she and we have made lots of friends as a result of this daily excursion. My new-found affinity for the canine species has been extended to any other Labs, Jack Russells, beagles and most of the other cross-breed dogs that we encounter.

I remain, however, staunch in my dislike of small, yapping dogs. This issue, always a vague dislike for me, has intensified in recent years, owing I think in large part to the menagerie of miscreant barkers that my mother-in-law surrounds herself with.

The raging storm

It must be noted that my mother-in-law is a lovely woman, and we don't have any of the usual conflicts associated with the relationship - perhaps because any antagonism we might harbour for one anther is externalised in the raging storm of yapping scraps that curdle around her feet.

I acknowledge that these dogs can be quite sweet once entry has been gained to the premises (when not making themselves ill in a jealous rage), but the hysterical cacophony of ear-piercing reports that welcomes us every time we go calling - and the dogs know us - is enough to put me in a bad mood for the remainder of the visit.

My sister-in-law is also afflicted with the need to collect these noisemakers, and her husband sympathetically describes the yapping as the "magnified sound of the highest piano key being bashed repeatedly".

And the worst part is that they don't listen. Bella, when there is someone she doesn't know at the gate, delivers a decent series of moderate barks, then runs back to tell me that we have a visitor. She'd probably then resume her barking, but as soon as I say "thank you" to her, she's satisfied that her job is done, and she shuts up.

Arrivals at my in-laws are always started in the same way - with the frenzied, shrill barking followed by the ineffectual yelling of either my mother-in-law or father-in-law.

Everyone's heart rate is elevated as if we've had a good squabble by the time we get the chance to say hello.

My affliction with yapping doesn't stop there. Two of my neighbours have small shriekers. The neighbour to my left has two dachshunds, but they keep their dogs in the back garden, or when they are with them in the front, they don?t allow them to bark - and believe me, the dogs want to.

Over the road, a small Maltese is the bane of my Wednesday - garbage day - because she barks hysterically and repeatedly at every person who puts their rubbish out, at all the homeless people who walk past and rummage in it, and finally at the rubbish truck itself. It's relentless.

The irritation factor

Our park, being another place where dogs congregate, has its fair share of yappers. And it's not a uniform characteristic of the size. One man has three Malteses, and two of them are perfectly well behaved.

The third sometimes pursues us a third of the way across the park, barking hysterically at our ankles, and all the while its owner calls to it with the same ineffectual imploring I know so well from my mother-in-law.

Being barked at by a dog is not fun. If a big dog like Bella behaved like this, she would be labelled as a menace and we would be requested to keep her on a lead.

Small dogs may be less frightening, but they make up for their lack of size in the irritation factor. Perhaps there is some cochlear dysfunction that prevents certain types of people from hearing the noise in the same way I do.

Georgina Guedes is a freelance journalist. She lives with two cats, one dog and a husband.

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