Human nature is so diverse, running the gamut between personalities amenable to every facet of living with one another in harmony to those whose inborn proclivity to dominate others -- and all variations that fall within those two polar dimensions -- are exhibited most clearly in the relations between intimate couples.

Marriages fail in this modern world at unprecedented levels. And those relationships that inevitably fail leave the consequences of life-long emotional disequilibrium, disturbing the quality of peoples' lives, all the more so when children are involved. Individuals want to remain individual in their preferences, their values, reflecting their backgrounds and the level and quality of the nurturance they themselves have experienced in their own familial backgrounds.

Beyond which there is the issue of genetic inheritance. Neither my husband nor I ever felt the need to dominate the other over the 62 years of our marriage, and this is the early patterning that our children were exposed to in their formative years, yet one of our children has inherited a strong streak of unpleasant domination characteristic of those who will never be able to harmonize their lives pleasantly with another's, an unfortunate trait that was increasingly evident from childhood to maturity.

It's a strange thing, but perhaps not so strange, that we see and recognize that our two little dogs, siblings, fairly devoted to one another, but not excessively so, enjoy each other's company but never has one ever made the effort to dominate the other. Their personalities are as different from one another's as it is possible to be, yet they are companions undemanding that one be recognized as superior or commanding in any manner by the other.

What brings this all to mind is our encounter yesterday with someone I barely recognized, having not seen her in at least twelve to fifteen years, a former neighbour.  She lived at the top of the street with her husband and two young children, a boy and a girl. Hers was one of those marriages where the woman is expected by the man to consult with him and obey him on every level, however of little consequence that might be. He was a pleasant man, intelligent, a well-paid professional and she was a stay-at-home housewife and mother.

They had separated many years ago, their two children growing up sharing time between the two parents, and they are now adults. Their old house has long been occupied by another family of young children where it appears the husband/wife relationship is a balanced one of mutual respect.

The cheerful, pretty young woman we had known is now a mature woman, but even more beautiful than she had been, with the same relaxed, pleasant personality. She had thought to acquaint a friend with the street she had once lived on and they had ventured into the ravine, where we came across them. What resulted was a nice little reunion of sorts. leaving us with the impression that her decision to leave an unhappy marriage vastly improved the quality of her life.

"Even people who live in the country don't have an idea. You have to wake up every morning and look at it. It almost makes you sick to your stomach to look at crops that are drowning. And the rain keeps coming."
"You can't catch up with hay. But anything can happen in the next month. If we get a late frost, it could be fine."
Amanda O'Connell, 2,000-acre family farm, Carleton Place

"Our government is committed to supporting Ontario's farmers, and that's why we commit more than $230 million every year in business risk management programs available for growers to cover loss and damage due to risks that are beyond their control."
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs

"Crop insurance [government program] is meant to mitigate our ordinary risk [in the farming community]. This [this year's spring and summer rainfall] is not ordinary."
"I want someone [from government] to come and see this. I don't want a photo-op. We have neighbours who are in worse shape than us. One has 175 acres that never got planted. At this point what do you plant?"
"The front of our house, there is a field that literally smells of rotting corn."
"Farmers are proud people. They don't look for a handout unless it's serious."
Shelley McPhail, farming between Almonte and Pakenham

"There is a lot of acreage that has never been planted. A lot of soybeans and corn will be ruined."
"Cows need protein. There's a lot of fibre here [hay acreage still standing, losing its nutritional value as animal feed because farmers cannot get their tractors out on flooded fields], but very little protein."
"It's so late we won't get a second or third cut [this growing season]."
Lillian Drummond, 200-acre farm near Almonte

Cows stand in a flooded field on Lillian Drummond’s farm near Almonte. Jean Levac

The Ottawa Valley, like much of the province of Ontario has been hit hard by the incessant, heavy rains that have drenched, and continue to mire arable land, forests, urban areas deep in flood. In the spring serious flooding with resulting home evacuations took place as a result of the ongoing rain. The hill behind the houses on the street we live on began slumping, taking the forested sides of the ravine down into the depths of the creek below and three houses deemed to be in danger were evacuated.

Remedial work there with the aid of engineering and construction crews has been ongoing ever since with the intention of wrapping up the work and withdrawing the cranes, bulldozers and steam shovels at the end of next month, when presumably the evacuees will be given the green light to return to their homes, which have been under 24-hour security watch all these months. The installation of steel supports going 200 feet down to bedrock that shook all the houses on the street through the period of that work is completed.

But nothing can remedy the plight that area farmers find themselves in. This is a matter that nature herself must resolve. Their cattle that once grazed in meadows now tread knee-deep in those same meadows that resemble a swamp. The land is incapable of absorbing any more rain, it is completely and beyond saturated. Crops have been rotting, any that might have been saved could not be reaped since the machinery cannot be placed out on inundated fields.

As one farmer, the director of the Lanark Federation of Agriculture put it, "What was wonderful horse hay has turned into cattle feed. We're not asking for a handout. But if you don't have crops, you won't have cattle. This is food production across the board."
"If we can't make money [farmers and others practising animal husbandry], we're gone. I have to trust our politicians to put their heads together and come up with something."

Still from video -- David Whittington, Kawarthas farmer: “No matter how old you are, we haven’t seen weather like this. Last year, we had the driest summer in a hundred years and now we have the wettest in 150 years.”

This morning the garden is basking in uninterrupted sunlight. Not a cloud in the sky. Warm, but not hot. A lovely breeze moving the air about. No complaints from any quarter. Oh wait; the garden pots have threatened to go on strike if they're not watered. So that was the first item of attention this morning after breakfast.

And then we felt free to indulge ourselves in a forest walk in the ravine. It's drying out very nicely from our plenitude of rainfall. Even most of the pools of rainwater that have sat grumpily on the forest floor for most of the spring and summer are finally disappearing. Not entirely, but working on it....

Few others evidently felt the compulsion to make their way into the woods this morning. It is a Saturday, after all, when many people respond to a different type of compulsion; shopping. For many that takes precedence over all other values and priorities, and so be it. It does make for a more serene walk-about on the trails, when Jackie and Jillie are more focused on sniffing about than making a hideous commotion over the presence of dogs they aren't familiar with.

There was the opportunity for one short-lived race-about with a somewhat familiar dog. Some of whom are inclined to overlook the bad manners of our pair and play with them, others, usually getting on in years, hoping to make short shrift of the misfortune of coming across those yapping, annoying little dogs.

And then we came across a familiar figure. Someone we recognize because he has been featured on occasion in newspaper stories as a vigorous local bird watcher. Strangely enough, he recalled meeting us on these very same trails about ten years earlier, the first time we'd seen him there. At that time we stopped to talk about the kinds of birds seen in the area, and we did the same this time. My husband showed him where the last nests of barred owls were located in several places along our walk.

He wanted his memory refreshed, as it had been a few years since he had been to the ravine. He has a professional camera as his resource tool, whose magnification is many times that of my little digital camera, and as an experienced birder it's without doubt he'll see things that escape our notice. We talked at length about the birds seen in the ravine in the past; a relative paucity of them this spring and summer.

I mentioned my younger brother, also someone whose interest focused on birds. He knew my brother by name and reputation. It's a tight world that is occupied by bird-watching enthusiasts.

The late afternoon rain we received yesterday that turned the interior of the house as dark a night-time hours represented yet another rain event in a long, uninterrupted sequence of rain and thunderstorms that have persuaded us we might be actually be living in an aquarium and never before realized it.

Patience being a virtue, we had no option but to practise it as best we could. And today we're enjoying perfect summer weather; not too warm, nice and breezy, and clear, blue skies. Moreover, the forecast for the next three to four days is negligible-to-no rain whatever, and we can manage to accept that, with in fact the utmost gratitude.

Everything seems to be peaking early this year. The garden has taken on a bit of that worn, overgrown appearance that we're familiar with observing in late summer or early fall. In the forest that manifests itself with the presence of wildflowers not normally seen at this point in the summer intermingling. 

Along with plants growing larger, proliferating robustly and expressing more flowers than usual. So along with the daisies and buttercups and fleabane, yellow loosestrife and cowvetch still blooming here and there, there's the addition of Queen Anne's lace, jewelweed, yarrow, the first of the fall asters, wild sunflowers, cinquefoil and goldenrod. Nature's garden is diligently working overtime this year.

Yesterday we came across an old ravine acquaintance walking with her daughter-in-law, a beautiful young women carrying her three-month-old little boy, and walking their three border collies along one of the trails. What a sight they made, all of them together, the child absolutely cherubic, spreading his perfect little mouth in a smile for his grandmother.

Today, a treat for Jackie and Jillie again, meeting up with that little Apricot poodle. When the three little dogs run amok on the trails, they cover a lot of ground but they always tend to return sporadically to us, Jackie and Jillie as much to get away from the other little fellow as to express the exuberance they feel with life. When that happens, small feet flying in all directions, it's best to stop and stand still until they race off again, to avoid stepping on tender little paws.

We just don't seem to be able to escape the rain. True, there are breaks in these incessant rain events when the skies grudgingly convince dark clouds to move over a trifle to enable the sun, eager to prove it still exists, to shine down and dry out the excessive moisture that envelopes the earth, but soon enough those clouds, heavy with rain, aggressively claim priority and begin dumping again.

Monday's record rain event, the volume that fell throughout the day eclipsing records going back to 1899, was barely done with when more rain loomed on the horizon. It didn't just loom there for very long, it moved briskly along to once again inundate our landscape. Not really complaining all that much since perhaps the alternative of drought is worse.

On the other hand, area farms are experiencing crop rot and fungal infections, and there will be no harvest this year in many nearby locations. Contrast that to the fields of crops withering and drying up unable to come to maturity that will be ploughed under in places of drought, where wildfires have entered the environment to disastrous effect.

When we set out yesterday for our usual daily walk in the forest, it hardly seemed that we would come away unscathed. The atmosphere was dim, since the sky was clamped down tightly with low, dark clouds. Everywhere we looked in the sky the clouds moved along well enough, but those that were replacing those directly overhead were just as dismally dark, promising more rain to come at any time.

We were fortunate, however. It wasn't rain that disrupted the pleasure of our usual ramble in the forested ravine. By personal good fortune, for the hour we were sauntering along the trails, no rain fell and the initial gloom actually lifted somewhat. In the stead of being drenched by rain, however, we were literally being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The period of weeks we had enjoyed with a paucity of mosquitoes appears to be over, damn!

Our two little dogs, though, had reason to enjoy themselves. Twice we came across a year-old miniature Apricot poodle we've become familiar with. This is a bumptious, energetic little dog who loves to challenge other dogs to races and tussles. And that's just what he did with Jackie and Jillie. Who themselves exhibit similar characteristics but aren't too thrilled when other dogs echo them.

But they did share an enthusiastic run-about even if most of the enthusiasm was elicited by the other little dog, considerably more robust in size and weight than each of ours. Jillie doesn't mind being chased by Jackie and when that happens they engage in the most acrobatic of happy hijinks. When another dog chases her she is decidedly lacking enthusiasm. Jackie welcomes the challenge, outrunning and outfoxing his momentary adversary. And when the heftier little dog slammed into Jackie once, he responded by disciplining it, resulting in the other little dog somewhat curbing its behaviour in the direction of restraint.

And that rain that withheld its presence while we were vulnerable? It did recommence later in the day and throughout the evening into the nighttime hours.

In 1899 on July 11, weather records at the Central Experimental Farm in central Ottawa reflected a recording of 74.2 mm of rain. A recording station measured 57.4 mm on July 17, 1900 falling in the Ottawa area. And last Monday? Well, the typical average rainfall for a month in Ottawa's summer averages out to 73 millimetres. Last Monday we reached a record for the amount of rain falling in one day in the Ottawa region, at 79 mm. Streets were flooded, so were backyards and basements of unfortunate homeowners and businesses.

So my impression that the rainfall on Monday was a veritable deluge did not come out of nowhere. This month of July is preparing to set another all-time record for the most rain falling in a single month in Ottawa. The two months previous, certainly have done so. We've had more than our share of rain. Wish we could offer some of it to the interior of British Columbia, to help battle those out-of-control wildfires.

Even wish we could convince nature to transfer some of that incessant rain to Italy, suffering a drought, endangering the nation's food supply, destroying crops for lack of water. Thousands of Italians in danger from proximity to wildfires that have broken out there, have had to evacuate their homes and their neighbourhoods while the wildfires are being fought.

Here, despite the enormous amount of rain we've had, we discovered when we finally ventured out the following day, yesterday, into the forest for our daily ravine ramble, that the landscape had managed to absorb the rain very well. True, the creek was swollen, but moving swiftly along, as it should. The construction crews were back at work Tuesday, at their mammoth effort installing gigantic sewer pipes in the ravine.

And the trails were, for the most part, in very good shape. Mind, growing things had been beaten down, but they were all rallying. In certain places along the forest trails, the forest floor once again resembles a swamp, but in a few days' time it will all recede, as it sinks into the ground. Our next rain event is scheduled for tomorrow, but it isn't supposed to be anywhere near the inundation of Monday.

"West Africa had long been targeted by Muslim slavers from the north and east. Now their European counterparts began to make their presence felt. As the slave trade settled into its grisly triangle of suffering between Europe, Africa and America, large stone fortresses mushroomed on the West African coast, complete with dungeons and manned by whoever was willing. Massive barracoons were built to hold the human cargo; and they were built to last -- they were still in use, as dwellings, in the 1950s."*
 Persian miniature :نگارگری ایرانی

Captain James Kingston Tuckey ... entered the River Congo in 1816 on an exploratory, semi-scientific mission with the 100-ton British Admiralty ship Congo and its 56 crew.
"Initially it was like a nursery vision of Africa -- crystal-clear water above a smooth, red clay bed; smoke rising from happy villages; parrots flying in streams at dawn and dusk across the mangrove swamps to feed off the cornfields on the opposite bank; comfortable temperatures which never rose above 76-F; and, to provide the necessary touch of mystery, a huge, natural pillar of stone near the river's mouth surrounded by whirlpools and carved with innumerable symbols, which was a fetish of Seembi, the river's protective deity. As they sailed upriver, however, the reality became apparent. Down-at-heel despots wearing cheap tiaras, cast-off uniforms, beadle's cloaks, and displaying horrible skin conditions, came aboard to demand gifts and rum -- one man stayed five days to make sure the cask was empty. Poverty was endemic, as was warfare. Poisoning was so commonplace that every man of importance employed a food-taster -- not that there was much food to be tasted in most places. Once having purchased a sheep and skinned it for dinner, Tuckey was horrified to find a man chewing its hide, wool and all, that had been roasted to lukewarm on a fire. Even where the land was capable of producing food, agriculture was pursued in a half-hearted, apathetic fashion, cattle being left to roam indiscriminately, never milked and often slaughtered in calf."*

"The cause of this economic ruin was slavery, which had been practised so relentlessly over the last 300 years that it was now a fact of life. Few people dared venture a day's walk from their village lest they be kidnapped by marauding gangs. Being sold as a slave had even entered the penal code as punishment for adultery with a chief's wife. Warfare was conducted for no other purpose than the capture of slaves. Human beings had become the region's major product, the sole currency with which chieftains could buy the shoddy wonders of European civilization. The price of a man was fixed with all the exactitude of foreign exchange. The rate, in Tuckey's time, was two muskets, two casks of gunpowder, fifty-two yards of cloth, one fancy sash, two jars of brandy, five knives, five strings of beads, one razor, one looking-glass, one cap, one iron bar, one pair of 'scizzars' and a padlock. Now and then Tuckey caught glimpses of the trade. Hard-bitten slavers carrying British and
American crews and sailing under Spanish or Portuguese colours flitted by night past the Congo, sending an occasional cannon-ball its way, as they went about the business of lifting what Tuckey estimated to be 2,000 slaves per year from the Congo River -- a relatively modest haul compared to other areas."*

From: Barrow's Boys by Fergus Fleming, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998

Around 1600 AD, European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast, which enabled the corsairs to extend their activities into the Atlantic Ocean, and the impact of Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century.
While the Barbary slave trade is typically portrayed as Muslim corsairs capturing white Christian victims, this is far too simplistic.  In reality, the corsairs were not concerned with the race or religious orientation of those they captured. Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim. And the corsairs were not only Muslim; English privateers and Dutch captains also exploited the changing loyalties of an era in which friends could become enemies and enemies friends with the stroke of a pen.
"One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature,” said historian Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy . “But that is not true,"

*Slave trading was banned first by Denmark in 1802, by Britain and America in 1808, by Sweden in 1813, by the Netherlands a year later, by France in 1818 and by Spain in 1820 followed by Portugal in 1836 But under-the-counter trading to the Americas went on well into the 1850s.



Gholam Hoseyn Mirza Masoud, one of Zell-e-Soltan’s sons, with his personal African slave, Julfa, Isfahan, 1880s Photograph: Thooni Johannes/Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, Tehran, Iran

Ever impetuous, volatile nature has returned us to what has become most familiar to us in this region over this past spring and well into the summer months; an ongoing deluge of never-ending rain. Rain has returned, after we had enjoyed a brief return to weather-event normalcy. A spate of days with no more serious rain events than mere sprinklings here and there under sometimes-cloudy, but often sunny skies.

And now, stiff winds allied with the rain drive it toward the house, and onto everything below, saturating the ground again and weighting down all growing things in the garden. Flower stalks have been humbled with the weight of the rain, bowing their heads to the ground.

We've been forecasted to receive between 30 to 40 mm of rain today so it would appear that we'll be bypassing our usual ravine walk today. Even our forest-trail-loving little puppies balk at exposure to driving rain, happy to forego a day's adventure to remain dry indoors. They've already hunkered down, not very much appreciating their first outing in the backyard this morning, to return indoors drenched to the skin.

The house interior is dim as only a heavily overcast, rainy day can guarantee. So, early as it is, lights are turned on to be able to negotiate our way about. The lack of sun and cooler temperatures, a far cry from that which we've been exposed to in the last several days, has also ensured that the interior house temperature is cool, humid, and not particularly pleasantly so.

How pleasurable it would be, and useful, to be able, by some mysterious force of collective imagining to direct that rain and divert it from this part of Canada to the distance it would take to effectively water and douse the hundreds of wildfires devastating the interior of British Columbia!

The thousands of evacuees and the determined firefighters would applaud such an event. Those people who have been given permission to return to 100 Mile House have also been warned that there is a possibility they will once more be ordered to evacuate, should the situation once again reverse itself.

For the first nine years of her life we took our granddaughter with us for hiking forays into the forested ravine across from our street every day. During that time, when she was an infant as soon as her mother delivered her to us on her way to work, I would carry her in a child backpack downhill and up. We would set out early, around seven in the morning and then have breakfast on our return home around eight. A bit of fruit juice and perhaps a piece of fruit would do her until breakfast.

In those years she was introduced to wild grapes (not very tasty) growing on vines in the forest, to sweet berry pickings in late summer when raspberries and thimbleberries ripened. And earlier, in June, when wild strawberries were to be had. And then in the fall, there was a plenitude of apples from the various apple trees in parts of the forest that hosted them. Some of the trees bore sour, dry apples, others sweet and juicy, and we'd try them all.

Because of the extremely wet, weather-record-breaking spring and summer we've experienced so far this year some things are different; if anything we've found the season's growth accelerated, and that goes for the apples now putting on weight in the ravine's wild apple trees. In contrast, on our daughter's acreage about an hour's drive from here, the apple trees are not producing at all, this year. Fairly puzzling; perhaps an arborist would know why. They also won't know for a while yet whether their bees will have a good honey year. Bees can't fly in heavy downpours and their activity has been limited this unusual year.

The tall sunflowers in the ravine are now beginning to bloom, and so are the cornflowers, though there aren't many of them. They're certainly distinct and hard not to notice. As the season wears on we'll see far more of them. The staghorn sumac floral clusters have turned bright red, another source of startling colour in a sea of green.

We've noticed that because of extreme wet conditions, some trees have dropped leaves. They turn mostly yellow, sometimes bright pink, drop to the ground as an expression of their discontent with the weather conditions. In our gardens our two lovely magnolia trees are also losing leaves, dropping them in protest of too much rain.

We have noticed that though there were plenty of flowers a month ago on the raspberry stalks, few berries have resulted; again, no doubt the result of the rain, though it seems counter-intuitive that the rain would deter the transition of the blooms into fruit. That resulting fruit would attain size but not sweetness would seem more reasonable.

The blossoming stage of thimbleberries remains ongoing, the bright pink, good-sized flowers eye-catchingly beautiful. It will be interesting to see in a month's time whether the shrubs will produce the usual complement of berries, or whether what's happened with the raspberries will be repeated with the thimbleberries.

We found our backyard gardens a true beehive of activity this morning. During our usual post-breakfast stroll-about in the gardens, when Jackie and Jillie accompany us for a brief airing after their breakfast and ours, a leisurely affair in and of itself, we found ourselves in the company of ample insects.

One of our large, old and very productive shrub roses is once again this year the venue of a concatenation of those beautiful, rapacious Japanese beetles that have, for the past five or six years never failed to visit in their numbers, hungry and vegetation-destroying. They're either consuming rose bushes or our old and valued corkscrew hazel tree.

A short few feet from that now-pitiful-looking rose shrub is our colony of colourful bergamot (Bee's Balm) perennials still in bright bloom. And they're the hosts of numerous bees flitting about from flower to flower gathering the wherewithal for the production of honey. As useful to humanity's need for natural assistance in fertilizing crops as the beetles are  harmful to green growing things.

They don't mind our close presence in observing them, any more than we mind theirs performing their vital tasks. We appreciate their presence and they ignore ours. Mind, should any of them approach Jackie or Jillie the reception would be decidedly frosty. Few things upset Jillie quite as much as insects buzzing about her. Both our little dogs react to the presence of insects. Should a housefly on these hot summer days manage to enter the house as some do, both Jackie and Jillie attempt to corral it with a mind to destroying the creature should it venture close enough.

As for those black twins of mischievous intent, these forays out into the garden post-breakfast trigger their antic physical, gymnastic response. They begin dashing madly about in a fury of activity, one after the other, daring one another to outrun each other, meeting halfway to engage in snarling playful wrestling matches, entertaining us no end.

Jillie will take a break, rush up the stairs to the deck, shove aside the screen door (ample opportunity for houseflies to enter thereby), scramble over to her drinking bowl, then rush back outside for more opportunities to challenge her brother. But outrun him she cannot. He's as fleet and nimble as the wind.

Those areas of the forest floor in the ravine where we take daily rambles are finally beginning to revert from swamp-like conditions to what a forest floor usually resembles; a host to bracken thriving with all manner of natural growth familiar and unfamiliar from ferns to baneberry, dogwood to wildflowers. Although there remain areas steeped in muck, if this return to what we consider to be normal summer weather continues, the forest will eventually return to its usual state.

Although when we were two-thirds of the way yesterday through our hike on the forest trails we heard the unmistakable warning of an oncoming storm when thunder pealed in the distance, and continued to threaten, as it moved closer and the sound increased, it may have created a rainstorm somewhere, but not over us. It was yet another hot, steamy day, with a mix of sun and cloud, but with a lovely cooling breeze that kept mosquitoes and blackflies at bay.

In fact, although I felt sufficiently emboldened by the heat to wear a skimpy top and black at that, the absence of mosquitoes was quite wonderful throughout the ravine. It was only later, when I was doing some work in the garden that I was mobbed by ravenous mosquitoes.

In areas of the ravine jewelweed has found a home for itself and it has colonized quite a few areas. Because it's a forested environment, some of those areas receive scant sun and the result is that there are scant flowers. It's one of those plants that has a beneficial purpose to humans, since when the sap from the plant is applied over areas of the skin that have been exposed to poison ivy, it acts as an antidote. It likes moist growing conditions, and we admire the tiny orchid-like orange flowers that it carries. And yesterday, for the first time this season, we came across jewelweed in flower; one plant only amongst the throng, but a delight to see.

We also came across some canine acquaintances of our two little dogs. One, a Bernese Mountain dog, a huge, generally well-mannered breed, is often taken aback at the bumptious manner our two evince, galloping at top speed toward it, barking furiously the while, until they reach the dog whose name is Benji, and become becalmed.

We're more comfortable now and pleased generally with their behaviour now that we've taken them off leash again. They can wander at will as long as they behave, and as long as they stay in close proximity to us, which they tend to do in any event. And we're a little less anxious about their enthusiastic aggressiveness which is better for them and for us (our diminished anxiety, that is). Just hoping that some unfamiliar dog won't take their behaviour as an insult and react accordingly when ours make their usual belligerent approach.

But the truth seems to be that it is small dogs that tend to exhibit more anti-social behaviour in the canine world than medium-sized and large dogs tend to. With the exclusion of some obvious breeds specifically bred to be hostile and violent, when their size and muscular strength represent a potential threat at large and their owners cultivate that propensity.