It’s criminal for your dog to attack a swan – or me!

Published: 3 June, 2010

• GUINEVRE and Trelawney Ffrench can be nastily sarcastic, if they like, about the problem of unmindful dog-owners killing swans and harassing passers-by on Hampstead Heath (Letters, May 27). 

The law, however, takes a different view, and so does the Corporation of the City of London, which is now seeking powers to hand out on-the-spot fines to the people responsible.

As for Desmond Quilty, who bizarrely claims (May 27) I am in favour of “punishing all dog-owners”, all I actually said was that there should be legible signs warning that dogs must be kept on a lead near the ponds. 

This is already advisory and signs have been posted for several years since the killing of the swan on Highgate No 1 Pond. The trouble is that the signs are tiny, and temporary and too easily ignored, and everybody does ignore them.

It is a criminal offence to let your dog attack a swan. 

It is also, and this will be shocking news to Ffrench & Ffrench, who think dogs should be allowed to bite me because I “must taste good”, a criminal offence to let your dog attack human beings. I fail to see how the due observance of English common law, and common sense, can in any way be construed as “punishing all dog-owners”. 

My family has always owned dogs and I’m very fond of dogs, but these weird passive-aggressive “dog people” who secretly like to spell “dog” backwards, they’re just seriously out of order, I’m afraid.

HUGO BARNACLE
Croftdown Road, NW5