(Absolutely) true story:
When I was a little tacker I delivered newspapers after school - like Bizkit, but in a different country (and a pretty big city). One afternoon a dog bit me on the leg when I put the daily rag on the doorstep - bit me right through my Levis. When my Dad got home from work he had a look at it - as the dog broke my skin (and it was swelling) he was obliged to phone the cops. They came around and had a look at my wound - which wasn't a big one (in all honesty) - and then they took me around to the house where it happened. I sat there in the back of the cop car and watched them drag the dog out of the house, take it out to the front lawn and shoot it. They served the owner with an order (kind of like a parking ticket out of a flip-book) to bury the carcass within 24 hours.
I felt awful about the whole thing, but my Dad told me that once a dog had a taste of human flesh it had to be put down. Rabies was another thing he talked about - there wasn't an accurate test for it (back then).
I thought about that story a lot over the past couple of days. I understand how Suban must feel, but I also know what should've happened to that dog Maston. It's instinctive to exclaim 'Ouch, that mongrel bit me!' when you've been bitten by a dog; you would feel awful (as I did) if they dragged the dog out and 86'd him because you objected to being bitten. But, as my ol' fella told me, it would be the right thing to do and no one should feel bad about it.
It is, it's the right thing to do - talk around it all you want (as I tried to do with the coppers that evening many years ago), it's simply the right thing to do. I don't know if Karl O'Callaghan is reading this, but I think there's plenty of blokes with a spare shovel that wouldn't mind lending a hand.
