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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
Andrew Roberts on a man who gained a criminal record after his whippet barked at a couple of police horses
IN P.G. Wodehouse's masterpiece The Code of the Woosters, PC Eustace Oates is bitten on the ankle while riding his bicycle by `Stiffy' Byng's Aberdeen terrier Bartholomew, causing him to fall off and, as he immediately complained, to suffer `pierced skin scraped off right knee. Bruise or contusion on left elbow. Scratch on nose. Uniform covered in mud and'll have to go to be cleaned. Also shock -- severe.' But 1937 was long before the days of political correctness and the gross obsession with public `safety' from dogs, and sanity finally prevailed. Today Stiffy would not be so lucky, especially if the incident had taken place in a Royal Park.
Nowadays, as my friend Robin Birley has found to his great cost, it is possible to be given a criminal record even if your dog so much as `interferes with the comfort or convenience' of anyone else; even if no one is actually frightened, let alone bitten. At 5 p.m. on 1 October last year, Birley took his one-year-old whippet, Chester, for a walk through Rutland Gate and into Hyde Park. There, as...
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