Smokerdogs.

It has been apparent for some time that the keeping of pet dogs is being denormalised, even demonised. With no weapons available, a sturdy well-trained mutt who respects and maybe even worships its owner is a force to be reckoned with. You can’t have them. They might defend you.

So it’s really not surprising to find some halfwitted cretin taking upon him or herself to try to ‘deal with the problem’ by spiking sausages full of nails and leaving them around a park. The Daily Mail pretends to be shocked and horrified, but it is they who have published daily stories of dogs who rip up children for fun and who sneak into your house and fill your ashtrays and drink all your booze… okay, maybe they haven’t quite reached those stories yet.

The denormalisation of dog ownership has followed the one and only template the minibrained Puritans can cope with. The sausage story is reprehensible – I like dogs, but even if I didn’t, it would never occur to me to put out deadly bait for them. Politicians, yes, oh yes indeed, but dogs, never.

In the spirit of the ‘I don’t smoke but…’ format of the Mail commenters, I should declare that I own no dogs. Indeed, since the demise of my pond fish after two successive nasty winters a few years back, I have had no pets beyond the spiders who live here anyway and the sparrows I put food out for in winter. I’m thinking of getting some goldfish, the in-the-house variety rather than the grow-to-cat-scaring-size pond fish this time.

Nevertheless, I like dogs. They are marvellously nice-but-dim animals for the most part and providing they are not mistreated they are entirely harmless beasts. When I was young we had two dalmatians, which are dim even by dog standards and were eternally in a good mood. They usually had band-aids on the ends of their tails because they wagged their entire back ends with some force and normally clipped furniture with their tail-tips.

So why do I see ‘denormalisation’ here rather than just another lone psycho story? It’s not in the article. Check the worst-rated comments. Here is a selection.

Dogs should be outlawed anyway. Foul creatures. – David, Manchester, 10/2/2013 15:17

I suspect you will find these fields blighted by dogs fouling the are and this is an attempt to remedy the problem, maybe not the right approach, but quite effective. – Dave, Lancs, 10/2/2013 14:28

I hope a virus wipes out all dogs. Fancy letting your dog mess all over a playing field. How selfish these dog-owning plebs are. – maggio, london, 10/2/2013 18:00

Why are dogs on the fields in the first place? – abdul, Bradford, 10/2/2013 14:27

I hate dogs! Disgusting creatures. Put them back out in the wild. – Tom, Swindon, 10/2/2013 16:36

Might try this outside my front gate – absolutely sick to the back teeth if cleaning up/stepping in dog muck. – me somewhere, 10/2/2013 14:57

I just wish people would take this view over children who get abused !!these are dogs at the end of the day NOT humans they would digest them anyway and past them no harm done !!!people should spend more time concentrating on what important dogs and pets are not top of the agenda. – htt, uwishuwas, 10/2/2013 17:17

I think that the responsible person wants to keep the playing fields free of dog dirt or free of large, intimidating, inadequately trained dogs so that children can play safely there. It’s a bit of an extreme measure, but it’s the only kind of language that a certain type of dog owner is capable of understanding. – John Darke, Brno, 10/2/2013 14:32

Looking familiar yet? Replace ‘dogs’ with ‘smokers’ and it’s the same thing all over again, isn’t it? The only thing they haven’t yet worked out is why it could cost the NHS money but they’ll get to it. The level of intelligence of the drones is perfectly demonstrated by the commenter who thinks dogs can digest nails!

All you have to do with the drone army now is give them a target. Their hate is ingrained. It just needs a pointer. There are plenty of them out there.

So. How do we turn them on the Puritans?