Beagle Legal
“My ability to chase, catch and bring back a dead, or dying, bird for my master.”
Now, I put it to you, that the non farming, converted farmhouse dwelling yuppies who thought it would be charming to get themselves some free range chickens maybe didn’t think their decision through. Perhaps they had seen a few episodes of 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life” or had lately been ruminating over the success of television food expert and novice freeholding celebrity farmer Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. Their motivations for keeping chickens matter not. Their execution (if you pardon the pun) of their chicken keeping methods, most certainly do. Somewhere out there is a bald arsed cockerel who knows this all too well. And my client has apologised to him fully. Something, you may note, a fox would never do. But before you deliberate, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I pose only one question to you: If you were a cocker spaniel born to chase avian creatures, what would you have done, confronted with five stupid chickens spilled out into the path of your usual walk? This is an except from the closing argument of defence lawyer, Alan Shore, of Crane, Poole and Schmidt , the firm portrayed by TV’s Boston Legal for his client, Sonny The Black Menace, who stands accused of ripping the tailfeathers out of a chicken’s bottom.
Sonny and I Are Innocent!
I’ve just seen the film Marley and Me. I’ve still got slightly wet hair, as I cried so much. Very confusing marketing….but that’s beside the point. I do want to talk about dogs though, and as has been pointed out recently, it’s been a while since we had a Sonny the Black Menace themed post. Believe me, just like the writer of Marley and Me did in his weekly newspaper column, I could do a Sonny post every time. This post is on behalf of me and Sonny, two innocent bystanders in the evil world of dog poo.
Last night I had a conversation with a friend about the dog poo situation in my village, which I will name and shame- it’s Newmachar, Aberdeenshire. Hang your sorry head in shame, Newmachar! The streets are pebble-dashed with an enormous amount of dog poo. Really, it is quite spectacular. It would look like the entire village had gone back in time to the Seventies if it weren’t for the fact that the dog poo isn’t white….and there’s no “park porn” rustling in the bushes beside it.
I’ve just come back from taking Sonny for his afternoon walk/lark about, and in our 20 minute fun-filled walk in the biting North East cold, I counted 23 pieces of poo lying on verge, green, pavement and road. 23!!! Twenty-three!!!?
What makes the entire situation worse is that the singularly worst location for dog merde is the school road. It is as if someone is strategically placing them right outside the school gates as an elaborate sick joke against kids and the mothers who have to scrape the offence out of the tiny treads in school shoes. (Top tip, someone invent an implement for this very purpose- you’ll make a fortune).
A couple of things are clear to me:
- This is not the work of just one dog owner (notice I said “dog owner” and not “dog”)
- Since a great deal of it was on my street, people may assume that it is the work of me and the Black Menace. This upsets me as not one of Sonny’s little parcels have even been left to even go cold before being scooped into a bag and disposed of. Not once. And I’m a Girl Guide, so I don’t lie. But I feel the stares of non-dog owners as they tar us all with the same accusatory brush. Sonny may be called The Black Menace but, really, his crimes only extend to the culling of the kids’ toys* and the occasional bout of escapology.
So, what to do about it? My friend contacted the local council Dogshit Warden, they have a proper title like Dog Colonic Wastage Technician, but who are we kidding, Dogshit Warden is what they are. Nothing was done anyway, so quite what their duties are is unclear. They said they would “look into it”. Wow, what a strategy!
Since her abortive attempts at “going the official route” my friend has been keeping vigil in her kids bedroom, watching over the park space at night after a morning when she counted seven overnight deposits on her way to the school gates. She’s not quite sat on the Grassy Knoll with a rifle, but that’s only because she doesn’t want to roll in anything unsavoury on the aforementioned Knoll. She has yet to catch anyone. Now either we’ve got dingoes or someone is lobbing Fido’s offerings with a tennis racket over their back garden fence into the public arena.
Quite what my pal is going to do when she catches the perpetrator is unclear, but let’s just say she’s fairly handy and I don’t fancy their chances when she does.
The problem is that short of catching every offender and fining them, what can be done to stop this behaviour? Now, I’ve said before that I would gladly accept the responsibility of full police powers (and any accompanying anti-personnel devices on offer), and so would my friend, but no one seems to be taking this on board.
So what can be done? Do you have an answer (comical, useful, sadistic or otherwise)?
*You would know if it was Sonny’s poo, it would have a Polly Pocket limb or head in it, or a piece of Star Wars Lego.
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Dog Day Afternoon
Sonny is our dog. He is 10 weeks old.
It’s time I did a wee Sonny post as he is a bona-fide member of the Flying Martinis . I promise not to do another one any time soon, as there’s nothing as dull as folk going on about pets. Indulge me, this once.
Here’s 10 Sonny-related facts
1. The three cats hold regular conferences about him on the stair landing. I swear I see them congregating far more regularly than they used to. The conference organiser is Harleyboy, the elder statesman (he’s 15, which is old for a cat and like Nelson Mandela he shows no sign of slowing down), Libby is Mary Robinson and Lulu is Condoleeeza Rice. They are proposing sanctions and a trade embargo.
2. I have used more kitchen roll in two weeks than I ever have in my entire life. Toilet training is a tricky business. I am thinking of applying for shares in “Bounty”. That and getting wooden flooring.
3. Dogs prefer cat food to almost anything else. But if they manage to steal and eat any, they will produce twenty turds in half an hour.
4. Puppies are clever little beasts. I taught the boy how to sit in five minutes with some cat munchies and a clicker. Five minutes! Crufts here we come! Get my flat shoes and tartan skirt ready!
5. He is so beautiful – everything about him is beautiful. But I can’t stand to look at his man’s parts. They upset me. I’ll need to come to terms with them, soon. I would like it better if they were pixelated when I looked at them like on censored images.
6. He’s an underwear fetishist. He presented a visiting Sky telly engineer with a bra of mine and I think the bloke thought he was in a “Carry On” movie for a second. Nae luck, mate; I’ve given up sex-blogging.
7. He has eaten his way through a computer mouse cable, the strap of my green wedges shoes, a set of fairy lights and this weeks’ Grazia. He’s nothing if not full of variety.
8. He has been blessed with a bark that isn’t commensurate with his small frame. Surely some mistake in the dog factory. Somewhere there is a Rottweiler who opens his mouth and a little girlie squeak comes out as Sonny has stolen his bark (and probably his pants)
9. Junior Missy is bloody good with dogs. She is particularly good as spraying carpet cleaner and taking Sonny out for a pee whenever I ask. She’s channelling her inner pup and Sonny loves her. She’s the next Barbara Woodhouse, but with better dress sense.
10. The Flying Martinis are definitely dog people.
