One Man And His Dog

Inspired by and restless after our adventures on the Capital Ring, Dave and I have started walking the London LOOP. This walk is twice the length of the Capital Ring and far more rural, circulating at zone 6 as opposed to zone 3. Our first stretch was from the ever amusingly named Cockfosters to Enfield Lock. After walking through Trent Park and Salmon Valley and ending up with about three fields’ worth of sodden clay soil attached to our trainers, we stopped for a wintry picnic in Hilly Fields park beside Turkey Brook. We were next to a football pitch where a man and his daughter were playing with their rather aggressive and clearly untrained mock-pitbull dog. This being in a week where dangerous dogs had been rather in the news for mauling children, we kept our distance. However, the dog soon spotted our sandwiches and charged over to us, leaping right onto Dave’s lap, covering him with mud and growling ferociously. The dog didn’t appear to have a name – its owner just called out, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” and wrenched the dog back to their ball game. Thirty seconds later, the process was repeated. Not a word of apology to us though – the owner said it was our fault for eating our lunch “in a dog area”. I don’t like to think of our public parks purely as “dog areas”. And it’s extremely worrying that they thought their dog’s almost vicious response to an innocent bystander consuming food was acceptable. But a dog-owner who is prepared to apologise for their canine’s actions is a rare British breed indeed.