The Brown Dog - walking memories

The Brown Dog - walking memories

 

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Shropshire, England, it was very unusual for working class families to own cars, so we walked pretty much everywhere, or caught the bus.

Our walk to school took about 15 minutes, that included skipping, hopscotch, hide and seek and chatter time!

The journey was quite straightforward, just a few minor roads to cross and of course there weren’t as many cars on the roads in those days.

But our biggest challenge was definitely the brown dog…

He was a small, chocolate brown, malevolent mongrel with pointed ears and yellow teeth. He terrorized lots of children on their way to school. I don’t remember him biting anyone, but he would stand in the middle of the street where he lived and growl and snarl at us.

Of course we were all much too frightened to walk past him, so we would run back up the street and take a different, longer route to school, bypassing the canine bully.

As we got older and more able to plan and strategize, we would send out an ‘advance party’ - usually my younger sister - to see if the brown dog was out and about. If he was we didn’t even attempt to walk along his street, but if he wasn’t we would run as fast as our little legs would take us, right past his house and garden.

I saw the little brown dog some years later, he was going grey, his back legs were stiff with arthritis and most of his yellow teeth had fallen out. I actually felt sorry for him, well maybe just for a few seconds…

Further information: megan@hbrc.govt.nz, .