Tales of the Country: Dog etiquette

An old friend, someone I haven't spoken to since before we moved to the country, phoned me on Monday. He asked what I was up to. I said I was on my way to dog-obedience classes at Leominster Community Hall. There was a pause. "Have you got a dog?" he said.

It would have been humiliating turning up to dog-obedience classes without a dog. It was humiliating enough turning up with one. Stuart Brace, who runs West Mercian Dog Training, is a barrel-chested former police dog-handler, who latterly worked in drugs detection. He is the sort of chap who would have had Fluffy, the three-headed beast in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, urinating on command.

Stuart is a no-nonsense kind of guy with a no-nonsense moustache. A woman who gave her mutt too much respect was held up to the class, although not cruelly, as an example of what not to do. Then Archie's owner stood timidly in a corner while Stuart told the rest of us that Archie, half terrier, half juvenile delinquent, was a bad lot. We were not to let our dogs go head to head with Archie. Archie, you see, had had a terrible start in life. But he would, in the end, be all right. He just needed to be taught how to socialise with other animals. I sensed that Stuart has a bark worse than his bite. "Aaaaiieee!" cried Archie's owner. "Archie bit me again." Archie has a bite worse than his bark.

When Archie's owner pulled up his trouser leg, presumably to inspect the wound, Stuart could not resist poking fun. "Shall we all bare our left legs?" he said, rolling up his own trousers. Archie's timid owner looked him straight in the moustache. "Why? It's not a masonic lodge meeting," he said. I applauded, albeit inwardly. He was, fleetingly, the Chihuahua That Roared.

Dog-training classes in Leominster – all human life is there. As well as all canine life, obviously. But I would recommend it, for instance, to anyone single hoping to meet a compatible spirit. All you need is a dog, although you could always invent one, rather like Hugh Grant in the film version of About a Boy. Just say that you'd left your boxer puppy at home because he wasn't yet ready to be introduced into doggie society, and that you'd come along just to pick up tips and meet some kindred spirits. You'd have a hot date in no time. On Monday, I got on great guns with the comely owner of Tally, a Staffordshire bull terrier. It's hard to remain distant when your dogs are energetically sniffing each other's bottoms.

Thankfully, apart from the bottom-sniffing, my eight-month-old golden retriever, Milo, did not show me up. Milo is, on the whole, a well-behaved animal, although he has formed an awkward crush on our friend Jane. Possibly because he can smell her bitch, Milly, he keeps jumping up and trying to hump her. Last week, my wife, Jane, had to point out to our friend Milo's paw-prints on her waxed jacket. There was, apparently, a perfect one on each breast.

Still, if anyone can train Milo to be more chivalrous, it is the formidable Stuart Brace. And, as well as learning to be more obedient, Milo really enjoys the classes. He had a ball on Monday. Mercifully, it wasn't Archie's.

A quick nip and a cold curry vol-au-vent, and the hunt is on

The North Herefordshire hunt started in the car park outside the King's Head on Saturday morning, and we wandered across the fields to see them off. We also, rather unwisely, took along our dog, Milo, who experienced sensory overload. All those horses, all those dogs, all those curried vol-au-vents! It is customary on these occasions for the pub to dispense nibbles to everyone present, as well as a few strong sharpeners for those on horseback, and the King's Head, needless to say, delivered magnificently. A cold curry vol-au-vent is not my titbit of choice at 11 on a Saturday morning, but it seemed churlish to refuse.

Until now, I have nailed my colours firmly to the fence on the rights and wrongs of fox-hunting, but the longer I live here, the more I understand that the fierce opposition to it is rooted, to a worrying extent, in ignorance. Not least the misconception, of which I have been guilty myself, that it is a pastime principally for toffs. And I'm almost sure that I agree with those who say that foxes are more likely to die a quick and conclusive death at the teeth of hounds than from a bullet, which might cause them to die slowly and painfully in a ditch. Of the need to cull them, magnificent creatures though they are, there is no doubt.

And yet, when I tried to explain to my son Joseph that foxes are a threat to our hens, he said, with irrefutable seven-year-old logic, "But that's the food chain, daddy. If foxes didn't eat hens, there'd be no such thing as a fox."

Location, location, location

On the subject of London N8, our former manor, I have to be careful. When I draw comparisons between our life there and our life here, folk get offended. I can write until I'm blue in the keyboard that Crouch End is wonderful, easily the best part of London in which to live, and some people will always interpret it as condescension. None the less, that's just what I think.

On the other hand, it is fact, not supposition, that there are some troubling goings-on in and around my old stomping-ground. Crouch End borders both Wood Green, where chemical warfare was allegedly being planned, and Finsbury Park, where 150 police officers stormed a mosque early on Monday morning, in a counter-terrorism operation.

Less troubling in terms of world peace, but more troubling for the parents of children at St Mary's, the school our children used to attend, there was a huge brawl last week near St Mary's on Hornsey High Street. It erupted at afternoon pick-up time, between pupils of a nearby secondary school. According to our friend Liz, it took 60 police officers – 60! – to restore order. There were 25 – 25! – arrests. Mass brawls were not unknown when I was at school, but they were sorted out by Mr Wakefield, the deputy head, and the worst miscreants given a Saturday-morning detention.

Moreover, when some other friends recently went on a "girls' night out" at Pradera, a tapas bar also on Hornsey High Street, there was a shooting next door. While police milled around outside, customers in the bar were obliged to stay indoors. A lock-in at Pradera could be the perfect end to a girls' night out, but not in those circumstances. We can't help feeling – indeed we keep being told by many of our friends still there – that we may have left N8 at a good, ie bad, stage in its evolution.

I would hate to sound too smug. But, heaven knows, there's plenty of lawlessness in the sticks, too. And we're well aware out here of the dangers of 21st-century living. Normally, low-flying fighter jets on practice flights zip overhead only three or four times a week. But in the past week we've heard them three or four times a day. When the jets start whizzing over at night, too, we'll know that war is imminent.