WALKING WITH WARNINGS

Look, I've got nothing against dogs, just so long as they’ve got nothing against me. 

But currently I’m doing most of my walking in more or less rural Essex, and I regularly encounter some unfettered hound that bounces up and sniffs me, pursued by its owner who says to me, ‘Oh, he may look like something that should be poking around in Grimpen Mire but he’s really just a bit softy.’

 

Meanwhile I continue to collect ‘beware of the dog' signs and here are a few 
(comparatively) recent ones.  

 

Are there really dogs behind these signs or are they just to scare aware intruders?  In most cases I have have no idea. As our pal Roland Barthes would say, ‘language is never innocent.’