Tayside Police Cause Offence … To Dog Owners

Tayside police have apologised to “Muslims” after a postcard featuring a puppy was used to publicise their new non-emergency ‘phone number.

I’ll pause to let you read that a few more times.

So what are these loonies, who I suspect are taking a pretty narrow interpretation of the Koran, upset about?

Does Allah have a particular dislike of non-emergency telephone numbers? Or postcards?

No, it seems that a few representatives of the Muslim community in Tayside have a thing against dogs.

In the words of Jeremy Clarkson: No, really.

We are told that:

… some Islamic scholars believe that dogs are impure and therefore ‘haraam’ - or forbidden - except for use in hunting or farming, and that it is not hygienic to keep a dog in the house*.

They say that the “impurity of dogs is the greatest of animal impurities”, and anyone who touches one must wash the body part that has come into contact with the animal seven times.

The irony here is that most people were probably unaware that Islam was so anti-dog. Thanks to the rantings of Cllr. Asif and others, now we do, and a great service to the cause of social cohesion and peace between religions has been done. Not.

In any case, I must say that as a dog owner I am offended by Tayside police’s apology, and so I am demanding an apology.

* I think I can speak from experience now when I say that our house-trained dog is considerably cleaner than, say, an 11 month old baby. Especially at mealtimes.

Nice doggies

Police dogs: there aren’t enough of them. Apart from being more open to having their fur stroked than most human police officers, they also have the advantage not having to fill in stop forms and are oblivious to the bleatings of the various scrotes customers they may come upon in their work.

“What? I ain’t doing nuffin!”

“Aw come off it, them tags was already there!”

“#@?* off copper you can’t touch me – I’ll put in a complaint for harassment”

Grrrrr.

“Yes officer, whatever you say. We’ll go away now.”

Dogs aren’t just used for reminding the neighbourhood yobs that they are not bad boy west side gangstas – our four-legged protectors also carry out detection work for drugs, missing persons and explosives. Of course, the dogs often face the same dangers as their human colleagues, sometimes with fatal results. At other times, the dogs face the same legal problems, as in the case of a canine officer in South Yorkshire recently (hat tip Coppersblog), whose prey had the stupidity to (a) drink and drive, (b) breach his probation terms (c) run away from the Police (d) try to shake off a lump of German Shepherd which was clamped onto his arm, thus exacerbating his injuries. The heartening reaction of the good people of Sheffield has been suggestions to give the dog (i) a large treat and (ii) an injection to ward off whatever the poor thing might have caught from the criminal he had his teeth in.

All this is prompted by my visit to the Met. Police Dog Training Establishment at Keston yesterday (it’s in my ward), where I saw a small part of the 13 weeks of training that the youngsters go through, as well as puppies (aaaaaaaaah) and a neat bit of topiary.