Scrap Book Project – Cynophobia and My Thoughts on Dogs.

In the UK you need a licence for a shotgun or to keep poison or even weed killer but not for a killer animal!

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Warning – If you are a dog lover and can’t understand why some people don’t like them then leave now and do not read this post!

If you ignore this and read on and then comment and tell me how lovely dogs are then I will not respond!

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“Dogs don’t like me. It is a simple law of the universe, like gravity. I am not exaggerating when I say that dogs that have not moved from the sofa in years will, at the sniff of me passing outside, rise in fury and hurl themselves at shut windows. I have seen tiny dogs, no bigger than a fluffy slipper, jerk little old ladies off their feet and drag them over open ground in a quest to get at my blood and sinew. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”                 Bill Bryson – ‘In a Sunburned Country’

On 12th August 1991 Parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act and that was one piece of legislation that I fully approved of.  It made it an offence to allow a dog to be dangerously out of control in a public place or in a private place where it is not allowed to be.  In addition, the ownership of certain types of dog, such as the Pit Bull Terrier was prohibited and also an offence to breed from, sell or exchange (even as a gift) a prohibited type of a dog.

Personally I would have gone a whole lot further – I would have reintroduced the dog licence fee at a minimum of £10,000 per year for all dogs (guide dogs etc. exempt of course) and I would have made people who want to keep a dog pass an exam something equivalent to the driving test just to be sure that they were competent to own one and were aware of their responsibilities!

Apologies here to my canine loving friends (I told you not to read the post) but I really don’t like dogs, I suffer from Cynophobia – I am scared of them, and this isn’t completely irrational because they really don’t like me either – but they are not frightened of me!  As soon as people with dogs realise that I have an unnatural and unexplainable fear of them then they seem to take sadistic delight in subjecting me to the terror of their company.

I did not inherit this dislike/fear from my parents:

I don’t like dogs because I see no redeeming features in them. They sweat, they are greasy, they smell, they have bad breath, they shit on the pavements and they piss up my garden wall.  What is there possibly to like about them?  If I was Prime Minister I would have them all rounded up and destroyed!

My dislike for them started as a boy when I was taken one day for a walk by my granddad and on a piece of waste land opposite my parent’s house in Leicester an Alsatian dog knocked me to the ground, pinned me down and stood on my chest.  The inconsiderate owner had let it off its leash and I was absolutely terrified.  Lucky for me that granddad was able to shoo it off and chase it away or else I was sure to have been a 1958, child chewed to death by a dog, statistic.

The next detestable canine that I remember loathing was my friend David Newman’s Boxer because although, admittedly, it was almost certainly soft and harmless, it always did that other thing that I hate most about dogs (after biting me of course) and sniffed my groin and left a smudge of dribble on my trousers, which until it dried made it look as if I had a nasty little bathroom accident.  I really do hate that groin snuffling business.

The reason that I don’t want to be bitten (other than it is painful) is that I have always had a fear of rabies!

Rabies is a very serious viral infection that targets the brain and nervous system and once the symptoms of rabies have developed the condition is always fatal.  It begins with feeling a bit unwell, a bit like a severe cold but soon after, the symptoms expand to slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations and finally progressing to full delirium and death.

So, I think I have established that it is not very nice and even though there have only been twenty-five cases reported in the United Kingdom since the end of World War Two (and all of these were imported cases from abroad) it still scares the shit out of me!

Although preferable to death, if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by a rabid dog then precautionary treatment isn’t very pleasant either and involves one immediate dose of vaccine and five more over a twenty-eight day period.  Half of the vaccine is injected in the region of the bite with a great big needle so that’s obviously not great news if you have been bitten in the arse!  Even this is better than it used to be however because in the past it was all injected into nerve city central in the solar plexus with a large needle inserted through the abdominal wall, which was apparently extraordinarily painful.

And for those people who say that a dog won’t attack without warning, you are wrong!

Once out with my mother, when I was about nine or ten, she stopped to chat to a neighbour, Mrs Gamble, who was the local Freeman’s mail order catalogue agent, and who just happened to be walking her mangy black mongrel dog, unimaginatively called Blackie, past the house where we lived.  I kept a safe distance  but the woman assured me that it was perfectly harmless and that it wouldn’t hurt me so in a moment of total rashness I extended a hand of friendship to pat the thing kindly on the head and thirty minutes later I was sitting in St Cross casualty department waiting for a handful of stitches in a hand scarred for life and a painful anti-tetanus injection.

Since that day I have never again been taken in by an owner’s reassurance that a dog ‘is only trying to be friendly’ and the estimated four-thousand postmen and women who are bitten each year will probably agree with me.

And I have to say that I agree with Bill Bryson:

“It wouldn’t bother me in the least…if all the dogs in the world were placed in a sack and taken to some distant island… where they could romp around and sniff each other’s anuses to their hearts’ content and never bother or terrorise me again.” 

I didn’t always dislike dogs however:

Cynophobia – The Fear of Dogs

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Warning – If you are a dog lover and can’t understand why some people don’t like them then leave now and do not read this post!

If you ignore this and read on and then comment and tell me how lovely dogs are then I will not respond!

—————————————————————————————————-

“Dogs don’t like me. It is a simple law of the universe, like gravity. I am not exaggerating when I say that dogs that have not moved from the sofa in years will, at the sniff of me passing outside, rise in fury and hurl themselves at shut windows. I have seen tiny dogs, no bigger than a fluffy slipper, jerk little old ladies off their feet and drag them over open ground in a quest to get at my blood and sinew. Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.”                 Bill Bryson – ‘In a Sunburned Country’

On 12^th August 1991 Parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act and that was one piece of legislation that I fully approved of.  It made it an offence to allow a dog to be dangerously out of control in a public place or in a private place where it is not allowed to be.  In addition, the ownership of certain types of dog, such as the Pit Bull Terrier was prohibited and also an offence to breed from, sell or exchange (even as a gift) a prohibited type of a dog.

Personally I would have gone a whole lot further – I would have reintroduced the dog licence fee at a minimum of £1,000 per year for all dogs(guide dogs etc. exempt of course) and I would have made people who want to keep a dog pass an exam something equivalent to the driving test just to be sure that they were competent to own one and were aware of their responsibilities!

Apologies here to my canine loving friends (I told you not to read the post) but I really don’t like dogs, I suffer from Cynophobia – I am scared of them, and this isn’t completely irrational because they really don’t like me either – but they are not frightened of me!  As soon as people with dogs realise that I have an unnatural and unexplainable fear of them then they seem to take sadistic delight in subjecting me to the terror of their company.

I did not inherit this dislike/fear from my parents:

My dislike for them started as a boy when I was taken one day for a walk by my granddad and on a piece of waste land opposite my parent’s house in Leicester an Alsatian dog knocked me to the ground, pinned me down and stood on my chest.  The inconsiderate owner had let it off its leash and I was absolutely terrified.  Lucky for me that granddad was able to shoo it off and chase it away or else I was sure to have been a 1958, child chewed to death by a dog, statistic.

The next detestable canine that I remember loathing was my friend David Newman’s Boxer because although, admittedly, it was almost certainly soft and harmless, it always did that other thing that I hate most about dogs (after biting me of course) and sniffed my groin and left a smudge of dribble on my trousers, which until it dried made it look as if I had a nasty little bathroom accident.  I really do hate that groin snuffling business.

The reason that I don’t want to be bitten (other than it is painful) is that I have always had a fear of rabies!

Rabies is a very serious viral infection that targets the brain and nervous system and once the symptoms of rabies have developed the condition is always fatal.  It begins with feeling a bit unwell, a bit like a severe cold but soon after, the symptoms expand to slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations and finally progressing to full delirium and death.

So, I think I have established that it is not very nice and even though there have only been twenty-five cases reported in the United Kingdom since the end of World War Two (and all of these were imported cases from abroad) it still scares the shit out of me!

Although preferable to death, if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by a rabid dog then precautionary treatment isn’t very pleasant either and involves one immediate dose of vaccine and five more over a twenty-eight day period.  Half of the vaccine is injected in the region of the bite with a great big needle so that’s obviously not great news if you have been bitten in the arse!  Even this is better than it used to be however because in the past it was all injected into nerve city central in the solar plexus with a large needle inserted through the abdominal wall, which was apparently extraordinarily painful.

And for those people who say that a dog won’t attack without warning, you are wrong!

Once out with my mother, when I was about nine or ten, she stopped to chat to a neighbour, Mrs Gamble, who was the local Freeman’s mail order catalogue agent, and who just happened to be walking her mangy black mongrel dog, unimaginatively called Blackie, past the house where we lived.  I kept a safe distance  but the woman assured me that it was perfectly harmless and that it wouldn’t hurt me so in a moment of total rashness I extended a hand of friendship to pat the thing kindly on the head and thirty minutes later I was sitting in St Cross casualty department waiting for a handful of stitches in a hand scarred for life and a painful anti-tetanus injection.

Since that day I have never again been taken in by an owner’s reassurance that a dog ‘is only trying to be friendly’ and the estimated four-thousand postmen and women who are bitten each year will probably agree with me.

And I have to say that I agree with Bill Bryson:

“It wouldn’t bother me in the least…if all the dogs in the world were placed in a sack and taken to some distant island… where they could romp around and sniff each other’s anuses to their hearts’ content and never bother or terrorise me again.” 

I didn’t always dislike dogs however:

A Life in a Year – 12th August, Dog Bites and Rabies

On 12^th August 1991 Parliament passed the Dangerous Dogs Act and that was one piece of legislation that I fully approved of.  It made it an offence to allow a dog to be dangerously out of control in a public place or in a private place where it is not allowed to be.  In addition, the ownership of certain types of dog, such as the Pit Bull Terrier was prohibited and also an offence to breed from, sell or exchange (even as a gift) a prohibited type of a dog.  Personally I would have gone a whole lot further and prohibited them all!

Apologies here to my canine loving friends but I really don’t like dogs and this isn’t completely irrational because they really don’t like me either.  As soon as people with dogs realise that I have an unnatural and unexplainable fear of them then they seem to take sadistic delight in subjecting me to the terror of their company.

My dislike for them started as a boy when I was taken one day for a walk by my granddad and on a piece of waste land opposite my parent’s house in Leicester an Alsatian dog knocked me to the ground, pinned me down and stood on my chest with its dirty paws and dribbled in my face with its putrid breath.  The inconsiderate owner had let it off its leash and I was absolutely terrified.  Lucky for me that granddad was able to shoo it off and chase it away or else I was sure to have been a 1958, child chewed to death by a dog, statistic.

The next detestable canine that I remember loathing was my friend David Newman’s Boxer because although, admittedly, it was almost certainly soft and harmless, it always did that other thing that I hate most about dogs (after biting me of course) and sniffed my groin and left a smudge of dribble on my trousers, which until it dried made it look as if I had a nasty little bathroom accident.  Why do dog owners let their animals do that? It’s just not nice, but they always assume that because they like the slobbering thing themselves that everyone else will too.  I really do hate that groin snuffling business more than anything else because I am actually quite picky about who or what sniffs my genitals and I am never very comfortable about the close proximity of a set of canine jaws so close to a part of my anatomy that I am just as fond of as the Queen is of the Crown Jewels.

The reason that I don’t want to be bitten (other than it is painful) is that I have always had a fear of rabies!

Rabies is a very serious viral infection that targets the brain and nervous system and once the symptoms of rabies have developed the condition is always fatal.  It begins with feeling a bit unwell, a bit like a severe cold but soon after, the symptoms expand to slight or partial paralysis, cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, paranoia, terror, hallucinations, finally progressing to full delirium. The production of large quantities of saliva and tears coupled with an inability to speak or swallow are typical during the later stages of the disease and this can result in hydrophobia because with difficulty swallowing patients become panic stricken when presented with liquids because cruelly they cannot quench their thirst because the throat and jaw become completely paralysed.

So, I think I have established that it is not very nice and even though there have only been twenty-five cases reported in the United Kingdom since the end of World War Two (and all of these were imported cases from abroad) it still scares the shit out of me!

Although preferable to death, if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by a rabid dog then precautionary treatment isn’t very pleasant either and involves one immediate dose of vaccine and five more over a twenty-eight day period.  Half of the vaccine is injected in the region of the bite with a great big needle so that’s obviously not great news if you have been bitten in the arse!  Even this is better than it used to be however because in the past it was all injected into nerve city central in the solar plexus with a large needle inserted through the abdominal wall, which goes a long way towards explaining my fear!

And for those people who say that a dog won’t attack without warning, you are wrong!

Once out with my mother, when I was about nine or ten, she stopped to chat to a neighbour, Mrs Gamble, who was the local Freeman’s mail order catalogue agent, and who just happened to be walking her mangy black mongrel dog, unimaginatively called Blackie, past the house where we lived.  I kept a safe distance from the flea bitten thing but the woman assured me that it was perfectly harmless and that it wouldn’t hurt me so in a moment of total rashness I extended a hand of friendship to pat the thing kindly on the head and thirty minutes later I was sitting in St Cross casualty department waiting for a handful of stitches in a hand scarred for life and a painful anti-tetanus injection.

Since that day I have never again been taken in by an owner’s reassurance that a dog ‘is only trying to be friendly’, because I know that given half a chance it will sink its teeth into me and rip my flesh to shreds.

Dogs – Hairs, Fleas and Rabies

My Uncle Brian and his Alsatian

Unless there is a very good reason for it, like being a shepherd or a police dog handler or something, I have simply never been able to understand why people keep dogs.  I prefer cats because they are so much more intelligent and generally speaking don’t go around attacking people, although I am not including man-eating tigers in this statement, obviously.

Let me apologise right now to canine lovers but I just do not like a single thing about dogs, how stupid they are, how greasy they are, the smell they make and especially the way the tongue hangs out of the mouth dripping saliva everywhere.  What I do not understand is why would people ever think of keeping dogs in the first place? On a pet scale they are just slightly less pointless than stick insects.  They generally serve no purpose, if you don’t keep them clean they can make the house smell unpleasant, they cost a small fortune in food and air freshener, you have to take them for a walk and pick up their poo in a a little plastic bag and worst of all they are a complete nuisance when you want to go on holiday.  Let me illustrate the point, if an average dog lives for fifteen years and costs £2 a day to feed that is £11,000 in pedigree chum and dog biscuits alone.  That doesn’t include vet’s fees and kennelling charges.  I’ll try and put that into some kind of perspective, at an average of £40 for a return flight to Europe that is two hundred and seventy-five Ryanair flights to interesting places.

Now, as you have no doubt gathered, I really don’t like dogs and this isn’t completely irrational because they really don’t like me either.  My dislike for them started as a boy when I was taken one day for a walk by my grandad and on a piece of waste land opposite my parent’s house in Leicester an Alsatian dog knocked me to the ground, pinned me down and stood on my chest with its dirty paws and dribbled in my face with its putrid breath.  The inconsiderate owner had let it off its leash you see and it was looking for a young child to kill and devour.  I was absolutely terrified.  Lucky for me that grandad was able to shoo it off and chase it away or else I was sure to have been a 1958, child chewed to death by a dog, statistic.

The next detestable canine that I remember loathing was my friend David Newman’s Boxer because although, admittedly, it was almost certainly soft and harmless, it always did that other thing that I hate most about dogs (after biting me of course) and sniffed my groin and left a smudge of dribble on my trousers, which until it dried made it look as if I had a nasty little bathroom accident.  Why do dog owners let their animals do that? It’s just not nice, but they always assume that because they like the slobbering thing themselves that everyone else will too.  I really do hate that groin snuffling business more than anything else because I am actually quite picky about who or what sniffs my genitals and I am never very comfortable about the close proximity of a set of canine jaws so close to a part of my anatomy that I am just as fond of as the Queen is of the Crown Jewels.

As soon as people with dogs realise that I have an unnatural and unexplainable fear of them then they seem to take sadistic delight in subjecting me to the terror of their company.  If the people responsible are reading this they will know exactly who they are!

Once out with my mother, when I was about nine or ten, she stopped to chat to a neighbour, Mrs Gamble, who was the local Freeman’s mail order catalogue agent, and who just happened to be walking her mangy black mongrel dog called Blackie (people who have dogs rarely give them imaginative names) past the house where we lived.  I kept a safe distance from the flea bitten thing but the woman assured me that it was perfectly harmless and that it wouldn’t hurt me so in a moment of total rashness I extended a hand of friendship to pat the thing kindly on the head and thirty minutes later I was sitting in St Cross casualty department waiting for a handful of stitches in a hand scarred for life and a painful anti-tetanus injection for good measure.  And for those people who say that a dog won’t attack without warning, you are wrong!  Since that day I have never again been taken in by an owner’s reassurance that a dog ‘is only trying to be friendly’, because I know that given half a chance it will sink its teeth into me and rip my flesh to shreds.

I have had even worse experiences than these.  Once on a beach on the island of Thassos in Greece there was a dog that I sensed was paying more attention to me that I was comfortable with and sure enough it started to chase me and because my mobility was impaired by carrying sun-beds and other beach essentials it was soon too close for comfort and barking and snarling like a rabid beast.  I’ve always had an irrational fear of rabies and what I’ve been led to believe can only be prevented following a bite with an excruciatingly painful series of injections.

If you are unlucky enough to get rabies then treatment isn’t very pleasant at all and involves one immediate dose of vaccine and five more over a twenty-eight day period.  Half of the vaccine is injected in the region of the bite with a great big needle so that’s obviously not great news if you have been bitten in the arse!  Even this is better than it used to be however because in the past it was all injected into nerve city central in the solar plexus with a large needle inserted through the abdominal wall, which goes a long way towards explaining my fear!

Back to the dog on the beach, I kicked some sand in its face but that only aggravated it and by now I was beginning to attract a lot of attention from the people on the beach but none of them made a move to help.  I called for assistance (actually I think I’d lost all control by this stage and literally shrieked for help) and embarrassed by the scene I was making my family disowned me and moved away a discreet distance of about five hundred metres.  Finally I fought it off with the sharp end of a beach umbrella and it moved on to a family of German sunbathers who simply gave it a welcome pat on the head and it was then to my horror I realised that it was no more than a harmless playful puppy.  It took some time to live that down I can tell you!  I still not keen on dogs though.