Dorothy and Toto make a stand

India has its sacred cows, South America reveres the mighty Condor, and Europeans, or rather European ladies just adore their little dogs.

One of the curious things about Europe is their love for pets and in particular the ‘cute’ little dogs Toy Poodles, Silky Terriers, Chihuahua’s and other pocket breeds. Some of these things furry pipsqueaks could fit into the palm of your hand, let alone a ladies handbag where I’ve seen some of them being propped up in whist being shuttled around by their doting owners.

What started the recent kerfuffle was an incident a few weeks ago where a little girl unfortunately got bitten by a Rottweiler and had to have a lot of stitches to her face. The Swiss being Swiss, a very strict law was immediately passed to deal with this problem – everyone agreed with that - only trouble was that the legislation was more like a sawn-off shotgun in its approach in that it introduced a blanket ban on any dogs being in public without a muzzle, and it was not enough ‘laser beam’ targeting known aggressive breeds such as Pit-Bulls, Dobermans, Rottweilers etc.,

This caused no end of practical problems as firstly stocks ran out of all standard muzzles and secondly since there were no muzzles even being made to adapt to little ‘wind up toy’ sized pets like these – some of these tiny dogs would nearly fit inside the entire muzzle!

But not everyone was happy to buy a muzzle and there was revolution in the air! Middle-aged ladies were threatening to defy the ban, others said they would complain directly to Bern (the Capital), whilst others in a more defiant mood, declared their revolutionary zeal by saying they would ‘move to France’ before they would ever make ‘Fluffy’ wear one of those awful contraptions.

It was quite interesting to watch – taxes and the price of petrol could go up and people would grizzle, traffic fines would be heavier during the holiday season and it would get a resigned shrug, but inflict this indignity on Madame’s little ‘Toutou’ and well, that was beyond the pale!

All countries and their peoples have their ‘red line’ issues – politicians touch them at their peril. It was very interesting this month to find one of Switzerland’s.

There’s already talk of ‘fine-tuning’ the regulation…