A JAPANESE CHIN MYSTERY

From my Dog World Blog on 27 May 2016

I love a good mystery. And the world of pedigree dogs certainly has several head scratching ones worthy of an investigation by Miss Marple! Most of them revolve around the dubious ‘heritage’ of certain key dogs usually at a particular breed’s inception.

Many of you will be aware, for example, of the controversy created by the Mastiff, ‘Ch Crown Prince.’ If we put aside the mystifying facts of how a dog with a Dudley mask, brown nose, light eyes and straight hindquarters actually went on to become a champion, there were also the many murmurings and questions over this dog’s parentage. The criticisms were obviously taken seriously enough by the Old English Mastiff Club to initiate an enquiry, which subsequently found nothing to prove that Crown Prince’s pedigree was incorrect.

INTERNET POST GETS A HAMMERING

Dog lovers were outraged to see a Facebook post by Alan Tobin, an Irish politician, about his delight that breed specific legislation had been brought in, affecting owners in his constituency. This was in Dog World on 25 May 2016.

As many of you who read this column regularly know, I’m not the biggest fan of the internet age and social media. Obviously it has brought us huge benefits, not least being able to track down the girl that played Nancy in your junior school production of Oliver.

But along with these dubious benefits of ‘connectivity’ comes some serious negatives. There’s the time many of us waste maintaining the numerous casual relationships fostered on social media sometimes at the neglect of our most important and meaningful relationships here in the ‘real’ world. And, of course, we have the growing incidences of cyberbullying, witch-hunts and the wildfire-like spread of malicious gossip that we all too commonly see in various forums. All very nasty and something I’ve actively tried to avoid.

BLACK AND FLOPPY-EARED SAMOYEDS

From my Dog World Blog on 9 May 2016.

Once again this weekend saw us on our usual ‘house-hunting’ expedition along the south coast of Devon. For lunch we stopped into the dog friendly Visto Lounge and ordered their Thai green curry. As the weather was unusually clement we decided to sit outside and soon a couple (accompanied by a gorgeous Samoyed) claimed the next table. Eventually our meal was brought out to us and I don’t know whether our smiling Samoyed friend was a secret connoisseur of Thai cuisine (or a budding food critic) because just as our plates were set down he decided to come over and join us.