Favorite Fotos: going to the dogs

Looking over my funny/interesting/curious signs folder, I found a fairly large number of these gems so far unpublished. So from time to time I'll intersperse thematic groups of signs into the favorite fotos posts. First up: signs relating to dogs and dog ownership.

All of my guests and myself were constantly impressed with the good behavior of British dogs. Joan said Maggie would have to go to obedience college before she'd be permitted to visit England. We saw dogs in restaurants, on the tube and bus, and of course being walked in the parks and along the streets. I even saw one riding an escalator, although signs there say you're supposed to carry them. And never, ever, did I see one mis-behaving or hardly ever even barking, except in the parks.

There are lots of restrictions on the behavior of dogs and dog owners, as you can see from the signs here, particularly in the area of maintenance of doggie "business." But except for an occasional uncollected deposit on the sidewalk, they all obey the rules.

And I certainly never saw one disturbing the wild fowl! (To be fair, fowl in the parks of London are hardly wild—you've never seen such well-fed critters!)


To offset the large number of warnings and restrictions, London dogs enjoy a lot of amenities, in addition to being able to go into restaurants and onto public transportation. Special "business" areas in some of the parks, for example (I believe this one was in Holland Park):


And special receptacles for the products of the "business." The one on the right was in Hyde Park, I'm pretty sure, but I saw them in other parks as well.

And you have other evidence of the high esteem in which dogs are held in Britain. I saw this plaque on a park bench in Battersea Park. (There are often plaques in honor of people on London park benches.) In case you can't read the inscription, it says "Winston: The World's Best Dog."

There's even a special burial area on the grounds of Edinburgh Castle, reserved for departed canine companions:


And, to take the homage a bit further, there is this fine "Animals in War" memorial, which several of my students included in the war memorial papers they wrote for my class. Beyond the wall with the bas-reliefs is a dog sculpture, but I wasn't able to get as good a photo of that side of the monument. You can see photos of the entire structure in the Wikipedia article by following the link.


One of the inscriptions on the monument notes that "they had no choice," but, from pigeons to dogs to horses, and more, they did serve Britain in wartime and have been acknowledged here.