OUR DOGS ARE EATING OUR CHILDREN - the Peter O'Connor column

And we are training our dogs to do that. So we must ask why? 

After all, dogs are one of the very few species of animal which man has tamed, trained and domesticated. They care for us, helping the unsighted and incapacitated, they play with and protect our children, and they work for us in herding sheep and hunting animals. 

We call dogs “Man’s best friend”, and there are countless stories about dogs saving human lives in all sorts of circumstances.

But having tamed and trained our dogs to be our best friends, we are now training them to attack fellow humans, and such training, as we all are bitterly aware, has caused our dogs to kill people, even little children. 

And if those two German Shepherds in Palmiste had not been beaten off by neighbours, I have no doubt that they would have eaten the little child they so viciously attacked.

While most of us will raise another outcry about the “Dangerous Dogs Act” and the securing of dogs which are bred and trained to attack people, I want to go deeper and ask why do we need such dogs at all? After all, we all used to live quite securely without them.

It is time that we, as a society, going beyond politicians and police, begin to realize that we cannot continue to seek to protect ourselves with high walls, electric fences, gated communities and savage dogs. 

As we retreat into these enclaves of false security, the criminals advance upon our dwindling spaces, robbing and assaulting us in malls, on the streets, beaches and rivers, and waiting for us outside of our gates. 

Our children can no longer be sent down to the corner parlour to get anything. Nor can they run and play through any neighbourhood that is not walled and gated.

The savage dogs, which can and do escape from the owners’ properties, are just another piece of “security bling” which we hang upon ourselves. 

We are proud of how “bad” they are. We have become a people who actually spend hours discussing our various security systems, like the alarms and the cameras on our property. There is an ongoing sense that people want to upgrade to the next level of personal security as soon as they can.

We are not advancing our families’ security in all this expense and vainglorious boasting about what systems and dogs we have. We are actually a society in retreat. And we are simply not facing up to that stark and dangerous fact.

I hold the previous governments primarily responsible for the breakdown in security, and the current state of fear in our country. 

These governments courted and contracted the Muslimeen terrorists following the murderous attempted coup of July 1990. We are all familiar with Manning’s ongoing friendship and courtship of the criminal gang leaders during the past several years.

But there is an inconvenient truth which we must all face up to regarding the advance of crime over the past several years. And that is the fact that we all allowed, if not encouraged, it all to happen. 

And the higher we go up “society’s ladder”, the more culpable we become. And this applies to corporate T&T, to the Religious Organizations, to the Labour Movement and to almost all of our NGOs. 

Instead of trying to deal with the root causes of the crime sweeping our country, we simply used our increasing wealth, and the obvious “status” of gated living and security systems to ignore the problem and to retreat into our false security.

We need to accept the fact that we have all contributed to the collapse in morality, ethics and standards in our society. And we need to take the decisions that we will all, individually and collectively, begin the work to reverse what has happened to us.

If Corporate T&T had the courage to support Stephen Cadiz when, as a fellow businessman, he called upon them to join the Keith Noel 136 Committee, the required improvement might have began back then. 

But corporate T&T were worried that if they were seen to be supporting Stephen, the then government might not grant them favours they sought. THAT is corruption! 

Now when they approach Stephen as Minister of Trade and Industry seeking support or favours, I am sure Stephen does not remind them of their abdication of responsibility, in the cause of business prudence, a few years ago! So I am doing this for Stephen!

When we bring our society back to a state where we do not require gated communities and electrified fences, then we can again begin to consider our dogs as pets and not as vicious animals trained to eat our children. We have the choice.