There is an increasing number of lawmakers in this country who consider dogs a public nuisance. Their recourse to ridding the nuisance is to create ever tighter legislation controlling the ownership of dogs and to ban the animals from ever more public parks and playgrounds.

At the precious few neighbourhood playgrounds where I can still legally walk my dog without having to go to jail, I've observed that dogs are sometimes met with hostility and aggression. To these people, the dogs react in kind.

On the other hand, my mutt is positively friendly to the joggers and strollers who tell her that she is so pretty.

If you're dog-phobic, the best way to enjoy your jog or walk without unnecessary fuss is to keep your cool ('chill', man) when you encounter one. If you ignore it, it will ignore you.

If you begin shouting at your children and the kids in turn begin shrieking, the dog might start barking too. The resulting cacophony will merely lead to more chaos.

If you make sudden movements - such as gathering all your children to you like a flustered mother hen - the dog will be startled as well and may reciprocate with sudden movements of its own. Just bear in mind that dogs being walked on leashes are not wild dingoes waiting to snatch a baby from its pram.

People walking their dogs will have had their pet under control. I take my dog in a harness, which is a leash plus shoulder straps, so that she is perfectly secure. Dog walkers in this country - who are very observant of cultural sensitivities because they are, after all, Malaysians - will also keep their dogs out of the path of those likely to react adversely to the ' anjing !!'.

Even if you dislike dogs, don't condition your children to hurl abuses (don't you teach them manners?) at passing dogs which are minding their own business. People who dislike children don't go around snarling at little kids in parks and asking them to 'go away' (I'm not going to repeat the more nasty expressions my dog and I have been greeted with).

Here is a story told to me by a European woman married to a Malay man. Being animal lovers, they kept a cute little dog and some cats - all well cared for and well loved. Some people apparently took exception to their keeping the dog and mercilessly threw stones at it.

The little thing was so severely hurt that its pained owners had no choice but to put it to sleep.

If you don't like your neighbours keeping a dog, please don't encourage your children to throw stones at it. That is really not nice and will be very bad for your next-life karma. You wouldn't want to be reborn as a cat, now would you?