|
|
 |
| |
Elizabeth Shorts with Mr Dax, who gets his
collar felt by a local bobby |
When it comes to learning new tricks, naughty dog Tixie takes the biscuit
POLICE and council officers are turning to professional “dog whisperers” and special “responsible ownership workshops” in an attempt to bring Camden’s naughtiest dogs to heel.
Keen to see if old dogs, and their owners, can be taught new tricks, the New Journal attended the first police-organised Dog Awareness Day on Hampstead Heath on Saturday with an unruly mutt of our own.
Tixie – a seven-year-old Fox Terrier from Gospel Oak – is a repeat offender and borderline sociopath with a profound hatred of postmen.
No picnics are safe when she is around.
To prove this point, Tixie introduced herself to the group at the East Heath Road car park by eating the teacher’s supply of dog biscuit prizes.It’s the kind of cheek that could escalate but “the dog whisperer of north London”, Dima Yeremenko of the Good Boy Dog School, is close at hand.
“Your dog obviously likes food,” he said, in what may be the century’s greatest understatement.
“That’s good. They need to want to eat. If they don’t you have no way to reward them. Bribery works like magic. After a while, they begin to work for you rather than for the food.”
Dima, whose dogs have featured in adverts for Guinness, Toyota and Sony Ericsson, claims the nine dogs currently in his class are so well trained they can read and write.
That might not be strictly true, but the results – achieved through a combination of rewarding, punishing, diverting, desensitising or, in very extreme cases, medicating the dogs – are eye-opening.
His demonstration dog, George, was so violent with each of his four previous owners that he had been scheduled to be destroyed. Now, he balances on Dima’s shoulders and curtsies on request.
Ron Bassett, of Camden Police’s Hampstead Safer Neighbourhoods team, warned there are “more and more issues coming up in the local community about dog control, fouling and stray dogs.”
He added: “A lot of people seem to think that dog control is when your dog attacks someone – it goes a lot deeper than that.”
Rather than enforcement, he said, police teams are now trying to educate owners and their dogs.
Yet, despite the surfeit of information leaflets and poop bags available on the day, one very important element seems to have gone walkies.
“We are trying to talk to youngsters with pitbull type dogs,” Mr Bassett said, “the ones with the dogs that are out of control don’t necessarily come to these events.
“Invariably, there are people that aren’t going to listen to us.”
“To those people we would say: We have the legal route to go down and we will prosecute.” |
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
