Terry broke in at this. “You must not imagine they are all dangerous—it’s not one in a hundred that ever bites anybody. Why, they are the best friends of the children—a boy doesn’t have half a chance that hasn’t a dog to play with!”
“And the girls?” asked Somel.
“Oh—girls—why they like them too,” he said, but his voice flatted a little. They always noticed little things like that, we found later.
Little by little they wrung from us the fact that the friend of man, in the city, was a prisoner; was taken out for his meager exercise on a leash; was liable not only to many diseases but to the one destroying horror of rabies; and, in many cases, for the safety of the citizens, had to go muzzled. Jeff maliciously added vivid instances he had known or read of injury and death from mad dogs.
They did not scold or fuss about it. Calm as judges, those women were. But they made notes; Moadine read them to us.
“Please tell me if I have the facts correct,” she said. “In your country—and in others too?”
“Yes,” we admitted, “in most civilized countries.”
“In most civilized countries a kind of animal is kept which is no longer useful—”
“They are a protection,” Terry insisted. “They bark if burglars try to get in.”
Then she made notes of “burglars” and went on: “because of the love which people bear to this animal.”