Status Dogs?

- by Kate Proctor

The distance from pit-bull to poodle may be smaller than you think

Sitting patiently at Manchester Piccadilly station yesterday waiting for the 2.15pm to Euston, I was confronted with quite a remarkable sight. Parting the crowds on platform eight like a tracksuited Moses was a young man and his Staffordshire bull terrier.

The dog, a glossy dove grey and armoured with a leather and stud body harness and collar, had a swagger so royal it made Bill Syke’s Bulls eye look like a poodle. On the end of his lead proudly followed his owner.

His head was shaved and he looked immaculate in an Adidas tracky and K-Swiss trainers of the same dove grey shade as the dog. They cut quite a dash and I assume that was the desired effect.

But inner city Manchester’s answer to Dorothy and Toto were also putting the fear of God into those on their daily commute. People gave them a wide berth; mums reeled back in horror whipping their toddlers out of sight. Ah, I thought to myself. It’s a classic case of the ‘status dog.’ Man in tracksuit gets a menacing looking dog to make himself look hard.

But the longer I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with the phrase. ‘Status dogs’ are now all that’s wrong with Britain. They’re usually a bull terrier breed and supposedly brandished by young men to enhance their image and intimidate others. And such is the hysteria surrounding these animals that they’ve been the feature of countless newspaper articles and, earlier in the year, the BBC3 documentary My Weapon is a Dog. There’s been a ‘status dog’ hysteria and whilst I don’t dispute the fact that there are now more mean looking Staffordshire and American bull terriers on Britain’s streets than ever before, I do object to the classist overtones this debate has now taken on. Men have owned dangerous ‘status dogs’ for centuries, it’s just that before, they were greyhounds, Lurchers, hounds and spaniels, and owned by the nobility, so the debate never came to the table. But today’s ‘status dogs’ are owned by ‘chavs’ ‘drug dealers’ and ‘people on benefits’ and the general poor. I can’t help but think this hysteria over men wanting to own Staffies masks a deeper class based issue; essentially, the general intolerability society has towards working class dog owners. Keeping a dog as a pet is a deeply British phenomenon. We love dogs in the way we love children. Every fourth family in Britain owns a dog. They are as much part of our culture as the X Factor and queuing.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that this love of dogs is a universalizing trait to transcend class barriers. It’s been clear for centuries that the rich own different dogs to the poor. Take the greyhound. Outside of dog racing circles, the greyhound remains a key status dog for wealthy countryside dwellers. A mansion just isn’t a home without a couple of greyhounds strewn around the place. And they’ve enjoyed a long history as the ultimate ‘status dog.’ In the Middle Ages they were bred solely for hunting and protecting one’s land, which meant prowling the perimeters of country estates, generally threatening the poor and keeping them in their place. In fact they were so ‘status,’ only those in royal circles were allowed to own them.