Michael Moynihan: Your dog is lovely — but it doesn’t belong in my coffee shop
Dogs are free to walk the streets. Their owners are obliged to clean up after them — some do, some don’t — but the road and the footpath are proper venues for a dog.
They say that at the height of his fame, Basil Rathbone turned down a significant part in a movie for one simple reason.
The part was a good one — Rathbone would have played the main villain, plenty of screen time, and it paid very well, but he still passed.
It wasn’t playing a bad guy that was the problem — he’d worn the black hat plenty of times before — but this particular villain stepped over a line. He killed a dog halfway through the movie.
“And if there’s one thing I won’t do,” said Basil, “It’s kill a dog.”*
People love dogs. I understand that. When I was a kid we owned the greatest dog in Cork: Trampas. Our house was on a laneway and no animal with a functioning brain stem ever came past one particular part of the laneway because to do so invited the attention of the greatest dog in Cork, which meant a sudden loss of the functioning brain stem and more besides. Trampas was also the best-natured dog in Cork. As a toddler one of my brothers sat on his head and bit his nose (Trampas’s, not his own) but the dog never reacted.
I take you down memory lane — not to be confused with Trampas’s lane, ho ho — to establish my bona fides with the dog lobby, which is not so much an irresistible force as an immovable object with an irresistible force.
People love their dogs deeply, sometimes irrationally, but I understand that. And I offer my story (above) as evidence that I too like dogs. A bit like Basil Rathbone, I suppose.
But ...
Last week I was in a shopping centre in Cork, strolling to the supermarket for some necessary supplies, when I had a pretty surprising encounter. By ‘surprising’ I specifically mean ‘stomach-turning’.
A lady coming against me with a small black dog stopped suddenly as her dog did its business. In the shopping centre, right in the central walkway, where all and sundry promenade, the toddlers toddle, the prams and shopping trolleys roll.
The dog left a large deposit in three separate parts, the lady bent down with her little plastic bag and picked them up, and then the two of them went on their way. Your columnist showed he is clearly not au fait with modern mores by being surprised.
I was not aware we had raised our four-legged friends to full citizenship. When I asked around, though, a couple of friends and relatives chipped in with stories along the same lines.
One recounted an encounter in a Cork branch of an international coffee company, which may or may not rhyme with Bartrucks. At a table nearby a large dog was making himself at home. Hopping up on a seat, resting a chin upon the table. Scratching himself.
Another shared the tale of a recent lunch in a restaurant in another county where a couple of dogs had a loud disagreement at two nearby tables.
“By disagreement do you mean barking?” I asked.
“Growling,” came the reply. “Snapping. Fighting. In the restaurant.”
I am referring, of course, to the people responsible, who should be ashamed of themselves, and not the dogs.
Because despite the relentless anthropomorphism, they’re animals.
I’m surely not the first person to clock the number of dogs now getting free rein in spaces which were once reserved for homo sapiens.
The shopping centre example is a good one, because there’s a plausible case to be made for using it occasionally as a short cut if you’re out with your dog.
Quick stroll through: what’s the harm in that?
Of course, as you’re there, and given you’ll only be a minute, sure why not drop in to get a coffee? You’ll be in and out. It’s a brief visit.
Next time, though, you see a pal, and you have the time, so why not just get your dog to sit quietly while you two catch up.
So what if your dog defecates in front of a group of people who are in the market for a quiet coffee, rather than a quiet coffee with a floor show featuring a dog emptying its bowels two feet away, or having a slash?
The same for those walking the shopping centres of Ireland, particularly those with the pretty reasonable expectation that their toddler, say, will not have their hands on a stretch of floor recently occupied by dog waste.
The mindset here is closely related to those people who shout ‘he’s harmless’ when they let a donkey-sized dog off the leash so it can terrorise small children, but it shouldn’t be conflated with the issue of dog waste on our streets.
Last week gardaí in Cork posted an illustrated guide to dog poo hot spots in the city. “Pictured below is not the map of a mine field, but of dog litter in a small part of Cork city on Douglas Street, Mount Sion Road and Barrack Street,” was the accompanying text.
There’s a vile selfishness at work here but, in fairness, dogs are free to walk the streets. Their owners are obliged to clean up after them — some do, some don’t — but the road and the footpath are proper venues for a dog.
There is a whole set of attitudes implicit in dog owners peacocking through a shopping centre, however, which has little enough to do with dogs and everything to do with a deeply held belief shared by many of our fellow citizens.
Namely, that the world and all its associated works and pomps exists purely for their convenience. This can be manifested in all sorts of ways, and forcing others to enjoy your dog is just one.
An interesting piece in the recently advocated for signs in public places which would explain to people how to behave.
For instance, not to blast your music choice or Netflix option at full volume in a park; some killjoy may not want to share your love of Meghan Markle's documentary.
Whether people obey those instructions isn’t the point. The point is that nobody can then claim ignorance of the reasonable expectations of others, though the ‘reasonable’ part of that equation no longer applies for swathes of the population.
And by population I mean people. Not Rex or Prince as they trot, tails up, through the shopping centre.
*Don’t all shout at once. Obviously Basil Rathbone killed a dog in , but that was .
