Kirsty Gunn: A marvellous metaphor of nation to be found in laws on leads and dogs

Our dog, June, has just got done by the police. Well, it's not so much her, I suppose, who's been, in the words of that great TV series of the seventies The Sweeney, 'well and truly nicked', as me. Because I'm the one who has to pay the fine and is getting stuck with a police record, not my little black Labrador. For her part, June is as sweet as ever and with no sign about her whatsoever that she's a lurking criminal or potential 'Dangerous Dog'. No. I'm the one who feels like she wants to bite someone.

Robust laws on canine behaviour are needed, but common sense is applied north of the Border

This all happened in London where I was for a friend’s opening – he’s a painter and only shows every few years and his work is always wonderful to see, with a terrific party, attended for the most part by an almighty gang of Scots who work in London and were all at Aberdeen together.

I was out with June, just before the party, in a park where lots of nice dogs go with their owners, enjoying the peace and green of a break from London’s noise and traffic. It was just June and I, out in the sunshine, June coming in nicely every few seconds from her prancing about to check that I was there and that she was being good.

“She’s a Billy Steele dog” I always say proudly when anyone asks after her – from that redoubtable kennel in the Borders that has produced generation upon generation of Field Trial champions – so, though she’s not a working dog, she’s very pretty and beautifully behaved, both.

Next thing, though, breaking through all this pleasantness, were two people calling out to me, from where they’d been hiding behind the trees, to announce themselves as plain clothes parks police and issuing me, on the spot, with an £80 “Dog Control” fine for June not being on the lead.

Eighty pounds! On the spot! And worse, to my mind, they’d been filming June and me from their furtive little hideout from behind the trees! Filming! For five minutes or so, they said. When I get some time, I plan to look into the legality of the whole thing. Is this the metropolis gone mad? After a recent mass of street violence erupting in a spate of stabbings throughout the capital, and the terrible ongoing threat of extremism… one might be forgiven for wanting to charge our law-keepers and by-law enforcers and their councils with a few more pressing duties than spying on individuals and their pets from behind the trees in a quiet park.

One might think, too, that resources could be somewhat better spent than on state-of-the art video and voice recording equipment (“This interview with you about your dog will continue to be recorded” I was told, nastily, by one of the officers when I told them to turn off the camera) – and, for that matter, on the brand new electric BMW in which the pair of them drove away. Have the Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London no sense?

They should talk, immediately, with their counterparts in Scotland. In Edinburgh, a city that must surely boast a similar kind of human-to-dog ratio on a square-foot basis, dog control legislation is so much more sensible.

Here, in Scotland, under the equally robust but more intelligent legislation that is mindful of canine behaviour but allows for decent human interaction and the exercise of common sense, we have the wording about dogs being able to run around in “Public Parks and Open Spaces” – though kept, quite sensibly, “under close control”. This means “at heel” or “on a lead” if certain conditions prevail: nesting animals, young children, and so on. In other words, wherever – to use the wording of The Control of Dogs (Scotland) Act 1996 – it’s “felt to be appropriate”.

Up in Sutherland, we’re even more down-to-earth, with the Highland Council issuing a helpful guide and the reminder that if the dog “is not being kept under control effectively and consistently by the owner who is in charge AND –” and that “and” is significant – the dog’s behaviour also “gives rise to alarm or apprehension”… Only then will the dog be required to be kept on the lead.

Now. In all this I see a marvellous metaphor of nation. I wonder if I should send my findings – forthwith! – to the Scottish National Party. For here, in dog control attitudes and the wording of official documents, we may see the difference between an over-developed Westminster bureaucracy and a smaller, and, we continue to hope – despite the alarming, growing centricism of SNP policies – more federal-minded Holyrood.

There’s the one, endlessly devolving laws and rulings devised around the needs of a big international city state that must police every human – and apparently, pet! – action in order to contain a volatile, multinational, dramatically economically-divided populace that has a range of ideas as to what getting on with each other means.

And set that against the reasonable deliberations of a country not so overwhelmed by the force of population and the press and rumble of different nationalities who can be frightened of different things – for some it’s dogs, for others it’s veils – that it can afford to be a more bit more civic-minded.

And, that that we might have a chat about a dog who is running around in a park off the lead, and not just bang it up with the equivalent of an ASBO sending her owner off into a foaming rage… Is the result of our country being what it is and who we can therefore be. Away from the metropolis as we are, and its fierce rulings about law and order, the guns and the surveillance that’s supposed to keep everyone “safe”…We can afford to incorporate wording like “felt to be appropriate.”

Let’s always make sure we keep that part of our identity, that willingness to engage, to allow for common sense to prevail over circumstance – no matter what those circumstances are. A conversation tends to enable understanding. Whereas an on-the-spot fine will always surely prevent it.