PEOPLE can invariably be categorised into opposites according to particular tastes, affiliations or beliefs.

There are those who prefer raspberries over strawberries, others are equally staunch believers or atheists, while some people retch at the mere smell of Marmite as opposed to addicts who crave a daily fix.

Then there are devoted dog owners pitted against feline fanciers. Taking on any pet is a lifelong responsibility. As the UK charity The Dogs Trust repeatedly reminds us: ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas.’

You can’t welcome a puppy or kitten into your life only to discard it because it grows too big, is difficult to train or becomes an inconvenience.

However, owning a dog brings far more responsibility than owning a cat. Dogs cannot, under law, be allowed to roam freely and must be licensed; transgressing owners can be fined for both offences. Unleashing a cat on the natural environment can hardly be described as the act of a responsible citizen. Cats are natural hunters which kill for the pleasure of the chase.

Not that dogs are totally innocent when it comes to decimating the Island’s wildlife, but they rarely enjoy the freedom of the average Jersey cat to hunt unrestrained and with such devastating consequences for various species.

The British are reputed to be a nation of dog lovers – a reputation that nonetheless fails in many quarters, with daily incidences of animal cruelty and responsible dog owners treated as social pariahs.

Apart from a handful of enlightened Island restaurants and cafés, dogs are banned from accompanying owners inside. Likewise, when it comes to finding suitable rental accommodation with a secure garden on this rock, you might as well be a suicide death squad in training for a terrorist attack on London as the owner of well-behaved dog – or parents of children, come to that.

When we eventually get a race discrimination law, will it also outlaw discrimination against dogs and families?

Our desire for the companionship of a dog is eclipsed only by the daily need to know what kind of weather is forecast so that we can expect the opposite. So it is hardly surprising that dogs have been grabbing the headlines over the past few weeks, for various reasons.

Last month the question of controls on dangerous dogs was raised in the States, and a fortnight ago there were calls for the Island to follow Wales in banning electric training collars. I can’t recall a time before when our beloved politicians were lobbied to replicate a decision of the Welsh, but there’s a first time for everything.

With canine matters in the news, it was inevitable that the perennial problem of negligent owners not picking up after their pampered pouches have done what comes naturally would reappear – and rightly so. The Island has for years been reminding dog owners that failure to clean up after their pets is punishable by law.

We also have speed limits that motorists ignore without a second thought to the law, so it says a great deal about Islanders’ attitudes to authority that the legislation in both areas is flouted with regularity and on such ever-increasing scales.

There is nothing worse when traversing a narrow path than having to play hopscotch, dodging piles of dog excrement, discarded innocently by the animal in question and left by a person so utterly oblivious to the little blights left on the landscape.

Dog owners who fail to clean up have a tendency to rail against horse owners whose beasts leave huge droppings in comparison, though in my mind each is as bad as the other. Horse ‘pats’ spread across footpaths and strewn in lanes are equally offensive as those left by dogs, yet the equine-owning fraternity are not obliged under law to clean up.

By now, dear reader, you should have gathered that yours truly is a doggie person who shares her home with a brace of Jack Russells, the most challenging and rewarding of the terrier clan.

Dogs have been an important part of my life since my first canine bonding with a trusty old golden Labrador. Each subsequent relationship has ended in deep sadness when the time has come for the treasured playmate, companion and loyal friend to cast of this mortal coil. It is a bond those who have never enjoyed can ever understand.

Rudyard Kipling, who experienced the loss of many a pet dog, but none as great as the loss of his only son, John, at the Battle of Mons, captured the essence of man’s relationship with the dog in his tear-jerking poem The Power of a Dog,’ the first verse of which is as follows:
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Yet we do, and over and over again, until it falls to the last pet to grief the loss of the master.

This age-old partnership is probably why politicians devote so much time debating all matters canine and how a law designed with the welfare of the fox and other game in mind has resulted in far-reaching and socially divisive consequences.

The UK law which bans hunting with dogs is one of the most contentious pieces of legislation passed under Labour’s administration, made farcical by police forces refusing to enforce it. This law has so many loopholes that it has the opposite effect by swelling the number of those who hunt.

For the first time in my life, and totally against my political grain, I find myself in tune with the Conservatives, whose election manifesto contains a commitment to allow Parliament a free vote on repealing such a worthless piece of legislation. If it had been workable, it could so easily have destroyed ‘country life’ and age-old pursuits that are the backbone of the rural economy.

The ban on hunting with dogs is a UK law that not one of our beloved politicians has attempted to get enacted here. Let us hope it remains that way.