DOGS AND SENTIMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 104, 4 May 1936, Page 12

DOGS AND SENTIMENT.

The remarks of some of your correspondents who have presumed to criticise my views on the subject of tiogs deserve, I "think, a brief answer, riddled though they are with sentimentality. "Dog" Lover" and the others apparently may bo numbered among those people who think that animals arg more important than human beings. There are thousands of people in this country who are suffering unnecessary misery, yet the "dog lovers," it seems, can be roused to hysteria only by a threat to the welfare of those pests upon which their affections are centred. One of your correspondents suggests that I should approach the owner of the beast that burrows under my fowl run. How am I to know who is its owner? I don't know where it comes from. I have only seen it dimly at night. In the circumstances lias Mr. P. C. Hughes any further objection to my laying poison? "F. 8." tells me they are "God's creatures." By the same token fleas are "God's creatures." What does "F. 8." do when he finds a flea in the bed? Present it with an illuminated address? In my view, the "good work" dono by tho S.P.O.A. represents energy which would be just as usefully devoted to the rescuing of fleas from the thumbnails of their captors, and which would in a world not drenched in sentimentality be devoted to the welfare of human beings. A point I did not mention in my last letter is the danger of dogs on highways. I was once nearly killed through a. dog jumping out in front of my bicycle, and there must be many motorists who have had to make dangerous swerves in order to avoid dogs. My advice to them is always "Go straight ahead. It won't dint your wheels. And every dog you run ovar i« one less risk to public health and safety." CAVE CANEM.