A nation terrorised by dogs

I don't like dogs at the best of times - there are some that I tolerate but that's about it. I do know people for whom a dog is a great support in an otherwise difficult life and I would not want to deny them a friend. But largely it's experience of what they and their owners can be like that hacks me off.

At the lowest level, just having some mut hanging around in the kitchen seems unhygenic to me. But some of the dog behaviour I've come across is terrifying if not downright lethal.

First case: Christmas 2005 I was walking across the park in Leamington with my children and my mother (then 86). A large dog - sort of alsatian size - comes bounding over the grass and jumps up at my mother. A shouting match develops between me and the idiot young woman who refuses to put it on a lead and seems oblivious of the potentialy fatal consequences of an old person being knocked over by an out of control dog. If she's reading this then please get in touch - I haven't finished with you yet you ignorant twat.

Case two: I'm cycling along the canal where I used to live in London and a large dog bounds out of a scrapyard, pushes me off my bike and nips me. The owner: "You're lucky it's not the other one - it's f*cking bigger!" Well thanks, obviously you get your kicks from terrorising innocent passers by. Nice guy.

Case three: my neighbour has - did have - a young sheepdog. Playful and relatively harmless I suppose, but it turned my field into a virtual no-go area. One time I had to rescue my daughter from the middle of the field crying and terrified as it circled round her barking. It would always be out there running around you and barking, getting tangled up in whatever you were doing. How it never ended up on the wrong end of a chainsaw I shall never know. It was an accident waiting to happen, eventually it did. Fortunately it got run over and killed and hasn't been replaced.

I could go on. But my point is, why oh why can't people who own dogs understand the distress and fear that their pets cause to other people? And why is so little done about it? When Princess Anne's terrier attacked and injured a child I still cannot understand why the court did not order it to be put down - still less why she did not have it put down of her own instigation. There is no room in a civilised world for people to have dogs that go around attacking people. Period. I'm told that in animal rescue circles a rescued dog that shows any sort of aggressive temperament is put down immediately - and so it should be for all dogs, and in some cases their owners as well.