Attention: 13 million killers on the prowl

That’s how many dogs inhabit our green and pleasant land. And there’s no denying that Surrey with its undulating hills is right up there, as far as green and pleasant go.

It was there, in that bucolic landscape, that eight dogs attacked their professional walker the other day and mauled her to death, tearing her apart limb from limb.

One of the dogs then pounced on another woman walking her own small dog on a lead. When she saw the red-fanged beast rushing at her, the woman picked up her pet, leaving herself vulnerable. The attacker jumped, bit through the woman’s overcoat and badly wounded her.

You might think the murderous animals were attack dogs, like rottweilers or pit bulls, those weaponised pets so popular on the more lugubrious council estates. But they weren’t.

One dog in the murderous pack was indeed a scary 11st (154lb to those unfamiliar with imperial measurements) leonburger. But the others were all cuddly little puppies, your dachshunds, collies and cockapoos, so popular with those who have to look for companionship beyond our own species.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, a compendium of authoritative opinions has been offered by ‘dog psychologists’ and ‘animal behavioural specialists’.

They all deliver mantras that are typologically similar to those often heard in our human courts: it’s all the fault of [society, poverty, poor educational system, insufficient social benefits] – of anyone other than the perpetrator himself.

“It’s sad that the dogs will get the blame for something that was a failure of human responsibility,” explains one such expert.

The poor doggies were suffering from stress. After all, they hadn’t been properly introduced to one another, and nor were they on intimate terms with the walker. In all likelihood they had been delivered to their pasture in a van, which had to make them even more anxious. Anyway, the walker shouldn’t have handled so many.

“What happens next,” continues the expert, “is an automatic response which sees the dogs looking for a way to lash out. This isn’t because they want to harm someone or something; it’s a way of communicating that they want the situation they are in to stop.”

Now dogs know how to communicate their displeasure without necessarily killing anybody. They can whine, growl, whimper, bark or even – as one dachshund I knew as a child did – sit up on their hind legs. Yet they can also pounce unexpectedly and, no matter how “socialised” they are, unpredictably.

I’ve written before about the lamentable exercise of anthropomorphism so widespread among pet owners. They assign human characteristics to dogs, forgetting their feral ancestry.

Yet these animals carry murderous DNA in their genetic makeup. That might have been suppressed by many generations of breeding and domesticating training. But it has never been expunged.

People pet and kiss their dogs, and their mawkish sentimentality is sometimes rewarded with a joyously wagging tail. But occasionally a dog would discourage such foreplay by biting the owner’s nose off. (Exactly that happened to the famous Russian actor Steklovidov back in the 1950s, which must have set his career back.)

Considering the ridiculous proliferation of dogs in Britain, the number of dog-related wounds is relatively small, some 8,000 a year. Though this serves a useful reminder of canine ancestry, it doesn’t really amount to a runaway social problem.

That may still be on the cards, considering how fast the dog population is growing. When dogs get to outnumber people, then we may be looking at a rapid spread of dog rights campaigners insisting that canine Britons should enjoy the same human rights as their owners.

Thus emboldened, socioeconomically underprivileged dogs may begin to see all people as legitimate targets, and they could put their numerical superiority to good use. But that’s hasn’t happened yet.

What, to me, is really lamentable, is the national obsession with dogs, which suggests a high degree of emotional retardation. I’m talking about dogs used as strictly pets, recipients of gushing soppiness that masks the owners’ deficient ability to relate to other people.

Functional animals, all those hunting hounds, police dogs, guide dogs and guard dogs, have a job to do, and they are usually treated by their owners without any effusive emotiveness.

But pet owners castrate their darling puppies to make sure they are less likely to act in character and then treat them as surrogate children. (Come to think of it, the drive to castrate human children is also afoot, but transsexuality is a separate subject.)

Sentiment and sentimentality may be etymological cognates, but in fact they are diametrically opposite. Sentimentality is ersatz sentiment, it’s like coffee made of oak acorns, tofu burgers, ‘genuine imitation leather’ and that ubiquitous oxymoron, ‘plastic silverware’.

Observing my own lifetime evolution from an uppity child with his head up his own rectum to a grown-up who gradually stopped seeing himself as the be all and end all of life, to a middle-aged and eventually old softie, I can see how my attitude to both people and dogs changed.

It has become the exact reverse of the popular adage of uncertain, probably French, attribution. In my case, it’s “the more I love people, the less I like dogs”.

I wouldn’t try to explain this intuitive feeling by delving into philosophy or theology. Nor will I draw the obvious parallel with paganism and animal worship. Suffice it to say that, even as I refuse, for all the ample provocation, to see people as animals, so do I refuse to see animals as people – even surrogate ones.

For me there exists only one justification for having 13 million dogs in Britain. They are a default source of protein that may come in handy as more traditional sources become unaffordable. What’s good enough for Koreans may become good enough for us.

P.S. On an unrelated subject, more and more people — even writers! — use the verb to refute in the meaning of to deny. This reinforces my conviction that the use of rarer words ought to be licensed. ‘To deny’ means you disagree. ‘To refute’ means putting together an irrefutable argument why you disagree. Big difference: everyone can do the former, very few the latter.