“Anything carried to excess is a perversion”
The views expressed by Pamela Hansen on the subject of dogs (A dog’s life, TMIS 3 July) mostly border on the perverse. Ms Hansen reveals her bias from the start with disagreeable sarcastic barbs which say a lot about her attitude. The gratuitous comment that she is “ surprised that we did not see a Facebook page calling for Star’s canonisation” sounds suspiciously like a lame attempt to make fun of the good souls who recently took part in a protest against animal cruelty. She then adds insult to injury with the snide comment “that we shall soon be arguing on whether dogs will be allowed to join us in heaven or hell, depending on one’s lifestyle”. Such cheap obnoxious jibes are as offensive as they are irrelevant and are not the stuff of debate in a respectable newspaper.
Ms Hansen goes on to tell us that she was nearly beaten up once “for telling a man off” for not picking up his dog’s droppings. Telling off? As the saying goes: “It’s not the joke, but the way you tell it that counts”. If the tone of Ms Hansen’s “telling off” matched the sarcasm of last Sunday’s article, it is little wonder that this gentleman flew into a rage. Anyway, this little story will have a familiar ring to dog-owners, many of whom have experienced being screamed at by somebody (often with dog hatred written all over them) for one thing or another. When treated in this manner, the all-too-human knee-jerk reaction is either to ignore such people, react negatively or even respond in an equally aggressive manner. Still, it could be that Pamela did not, in fact, act as self-righteously as suggested by her wording; maybe she gently drew this man’s attention – which is how these things should be done.
Ms Hansen singles herself out as not liking dogs “in her space”, that she would boycott a restaurant that allowed dogs in, and so on. This is sad but, of course, there are all sorts; we all have our individual pet dislikes (pun unintended) and irrational fears, but this gives us no right to use them as an excuse to restrict other peoples’ liberty or to self-righteously object to something that most normal people find harmless and acceptable. Unfortunately, this is such an over-crowded island that a certain degree of tolerance is required if we are to live together in harmony. It would be a very dull world if we expected everyone to behave in a certain way because of our own special peccadilloes.
In the good old days, it was common to see people accompanied everywhere by their faithful dog off a lead, and there was no harm in this because it was an accepted part of the variety of everyday life. We have now gone to the other extreme. Whereas previously we all used to live happily together, unencumbered by prejudices of the sort expressed in this column, it is now sad to see Malta becoming increasingly straight-jacketed by so many unjustified rules and regulations often dictated by the few. We are steadily becoming politically correct, fussy and intolerant to a suffocating extent.
As to dogs swimming in the sea, Ms Hansen might have been justified in railing against dogs if they were present in their hundreds on our shores, but this is not the case at all. If the well-frequented Exiles stretch of beach is anything to go by, there are rarely more than one or two dogs there at any given time. Now, nobody is asking Ms Hansen to share a swimming pool with his or her dog; we are talking about the wide open sea.
As to the burning issue of dogs swimming in the open sea: firstly, there are no diseases that can be transmitted from dog to man from swimming near each other. The ban on dogs swimming off our beaches is based on a false premise and if it was issued by the Health Department, it should either be revised or evidence-based, if they insist on it.
Secondly, it would make more sense to worry about proven threats to our health such as passive smoking, air pollution from traffic, the indiscriminate use of toxic herbicides, the lack of physical exercise and obesity and so on. If Ms Hansen is worried about swimming hygiene, she might usefully consider the potential of contamination from the dozens of pleasure boats moored in our crowded bays on Sundays and holidays. It does not take much imagination to realise that most of these vessels have latrines that discharge their contents into the sea where lots of people swim.
Please, Pamela, let’s have a sense of proportion and live and let live.
G. Debono
SLIEMA