Unnatural behaviour

We are a canine village. Of course people outnumber dogs. But I doubt if the ratio is much above three to one. Like the rest of the country we favour Labradors and Jack Russells — most of which (or whom as their owners would say) are imaginatively called ‘Jack’. There is the occasional scuffle when incompatibles meet. My Buster was actually attacked by three inoffensive-looking golden retrievers who belong to an even more inoffensive-looking middle-aged lady, whose woolly hat creates a false sense of security. Fortunately, in my attempt to fend them off, I slipped and, by landing on Buster, both protected him from harm and won the reputation of a man who is prepared to risk his life to save his dog — or, at least, crush him to death rather than have him savaged.

However, most of us are conspicuously responsible owners. This means that we never fail to ‘pick up’ — maximum fine £200. The only time, during my 11 years in the village, when excrement was found on a footpath, it was denounced in uncompromising terms in the parish magazine and there was a tacit agreement among dog-owners that the offending animal must have been a stray from outside our boundaries.

Our determination to keep the streets clean survived the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire’s condemnation of faeces-collection as ‘unnatural’. Speaking at the nearby Buxton Festival she expressed her horror at the discovery that Baslow, barely three miles away, has special boxes in which the plastic bags of ordure can be deposited. Open disagreement with the Dowager Duchess is not in the village’s nature. That we have dared to defy her in this particular demonstrates what responsible owners we are.