Dogs' Day
By MARY HOLLAND
`Most people like it be- cause there's something rather more manly about dogs than most charities, don't you think?' Thus an official explaining what attracts volunteers to work on the committee of the Battersea Dogs' Home. Certainly Douglas lay looked the very picture of a shy and manly Lord Bountiful as he posed with an armful of wriggling puppies and a moonstruck grin for the crush of photographers at the opening of the Home's new building on Tuesday. Beside the, President of the Board of Trade, who is also the focal MP, there were the Mayor and any amount of local dignitaries. It's easy to understand why. A pic- ture of a politician with a newborn litter of mongrel puppies, particularly the stray puppies born of a homeless bitch, is a touching sight and a deal more humanising to an austere public image than a whole sheaf of photographs of the same man kissing babies. The new building stands square, turreted and proud with a flag blowing, and was built at a cost of £54,000 to last 'at least 150 years.' It gives an impression of pale polished wood and glass and looks a lot more comfortable than any of the houses which surround it in the near-slum streets off the Battersea Park Road.
The Dogs' Home has always been an OK charity socially, with royal patronage and any amount of retired officers on the committee. Is there not the legend that Queen Victoria held the inmates as dear as her Irish subjects and at the height of the great hunger her donation to the Famine Relief Fund was the same as her annual subscription to the then Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs? -In spite of this— or perhaps because of it--the public image of the Dogs' Home has been far from bright. Most people still think of it as a cheerless Victorian pound where sick and sorry strays pass on disease to temporarily mislaid pets, and where the dogs are automatically destroyed if they are not claimed after seven days. The time has apparently come to lay that particular slander, hence the gala Opening by Mr. Jay the gilt-laden mayor, and any amount of journalists.
True, there is an air of Victorian institution about the place with its iron pens and green and white buildings, but besides there are trees, a farmyard atmosphere and much less gloom than any zoo I know. The inmates live in pens which are designed to hold nine medium-sized dogs, but are rarely full. The home handles about 15,000 dogs a year and a handful of cats, but could manage more of both. The dogs are kept for seven days to be claimed by their owners, then offered for sale to the general public, and most of them are found homes very quickly. They sell for about two pounds up, varying slightly with breed and obvious value. If nobody buys a dog at the end of seven days then it is just kept at the home until someone does, for the rest of its days if need be. This must be pretty dispiriting for the dogs who get left behind, but the keeper assured me that the9 get used to it. Certainly the general atmosphere was cheery, if deafening. Some of them did look tragically lost, but there was none of the hope- less lassitude of captivity which makes most zoos so depressing.
The most impressive thing about the home are the keepers, or, as the PRO puts it, 'the loyal and dog-loving staff.' Like herdsmen who spend all their days with animals, they seem to a man to have open, trusting faces. The one I was talking to had come to work at the home when he was sixteen. When I barged in on him -he was earnestly discussing with a crotchety middle- aged lady whether she would be better off with a scottie or a Yorkshire terrier. To be more precise,
he was trying to dissuade her from the former and direct her thoughts constructively towards the latter breed. 'This scottie looks small but he's heavy. They're sturdy, see. You'd tend him too much. Leave me your address and I'll send you a card as soon as a Yorkshire comes in.' There is no waiting list, but you can reserve a dog and then just hope for the best that no one claims your choice within seven days.
The real charmers are, of course, the dogs themselves. They range from languid greyhounds (how on earth do people lose greyhounds?), collies sitting patiently at the back of their pen and gazing at the passers-by with great wounded eyes, terriers barking for any attention and yowling at anyone who stops to play with them, mongrels with small faces and great pluined tails. 'Oh they know how to charm the birds off the trees, clever little bastards,' said my keeper, 'but you'll see it's the ones who just sit looking lost that get sold first. People want to rescue them.' It was clear that he spoke for most of the journalists.
Previous page
