How much is that doggy in the window?
The one with the waggly tail.
How much is that doggy in the window?
I do hope that doggy’s for sale.
I’ve never been able to understand the British dog fetish. If I really wanted someone to fuck my leg, shit on my carpet and nick all my tinned food, then I’m sure a carefully-placed advert would attract hundreds of people offering these services - and more - for free. Better still, there’s a chance that one or two of them wouldn’t have foetid breath or lick their own genitals whilst I was trying to listen to Book at Bedtime.
These are just some of the reasons why I am a fervent admirer of the chap in the photograph above. Originally known as Count Henri de Laborde de Monpezat, he now goes about under the pseudonym of Henryk, Prince Consort of Denmark. But I’m no title-snob: what I like is the fact that this man combines his presidency of the Danish Dachshund Club with a taste for sautéed dog, picked up from the time he spent growing up and studying in Vietnam (or, as it was at the time, part of French Indochina).
Better still, he sees nothing inconsistent with combining a habit of snacking on puppies and writing tender poems to his pet Dachshund:
I love to stroke your coat and to see how it shines
You dear, you special dog….
You receive me with papal pride.
More than a shade of My Lovely Horse in that. But the thing that appeals to me is the fact that Henryk can combine ridiculous sentimentality for his pet woofer, whilst happily tucking into specially-reared canine meat and churning out a cookbook called Ikke Altid Gaselever [Not Always Goose Liver].
It’s not an attitude that’s likely to endear him to dog lovers, and particularly not those in predominantly Anglo-Saxon nations. A shame really, especially as Henryk whipped up an earlier controversy by suggesting that parents could usefully use dog training skills to bring up their children.
Could you imagine what would happen over here if we started treating children like dogs?
No. Of course you can’t. The dog owners would march on Parliament. Treating children like dogs would mean we’d have to treat dogs like children. And that, of course, would be inhumane.
If we actually allowed small children to run around in all our city parks, safe in the knowledge that dogs were banned from pissing and crapping all over the grass, then we’d have to restrict the dogs to tiny “child free areas” (only in selected “green spaces”) so the four leggers had at least some space in which to socialise and learn about the great outdoors.
That would only be the thin end of the wedge. The minute we started believing that children had more rights than dogs to use local amenities, we might have to start giving the latter stupid names. Imagine what would happen if we started calling children things like “Ben”, or “Tom”, or “Georgy”, or “Abby”, or “Sally”? The very idea of calling dogs by these names would become so repulsive that we’d have to start referring “Kyle the Keeshond” or “Tyler the Toy Poodle”.
With names like that, we’d be too worried to let the dogs out of the house, just in case they got bullied. Out of guilt we’d buy them LED-encrusted bones to play with alone in their kennels whilst we tramped miles over open fields with happy and breathless kids.
No: that would be stupid and cruel. Dogs need to be protected. That’s why I suggest we all boycott the Chinese Olympics. Those filthy people slaughter dogs for food, when we all know they should concentrate on producing battery farmed hens and allow turkey baseball to be recognised as a sport. Why can’t they follow our example and spend a fortune on luxury pet food and pare back spending on school dinners to a few pence per head?
Thank God we live in a nation of animal lovers. Now, if only we could find some way of stopping those feral teenagers from roaming the streets. Those scum aren’t fit to own a dog.
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Comments
another Annie here.
The vegetarian and animal lover.
and I ain’t following any of those links.
I agree with the final line though.
While I have the utmost respect for working dogs, the idea of keeping one in my house is anathema. Dogs smell - even worse than children. And children smell bad - especially in numbers.
I find it baffling that people allow their pets to rule their lives in the same way that many modern parents allow their children to rule theirs. I certainly condone treating animals compassionately but anthropomorphism should remain the preserve of Disney.
Puss
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