Children’s Book of the Year winner Stacy Gregg would like you to put your dog on a leash

In the latest in our series ‘I'm too old for' in which Kiwis reveal one thing they can no longer tolerate, we welcome Stacy Gregg, best-selling children's author and this week's winner of the 2024 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award. Gregg is sick of people stereotyping her large gentle Borzoi, while allowing their own annoying little dogs to run free.

In the winter of 2015 I went to Moscow. I was there working on a novel, researching the true story behind the Orlov Trotter. Now a rare breed, the Orlov Trotter had once been the coveted carriage horse of the aristocracy, bred by Count Alexei Orlov, the man who also happened to murder Peter III so that the Empress Catherine the Great could usurp the throne. As a reward for killing her husband in a drunken knife fight Catherine had gifted a magnificent, sprawling rural estate, Khreznovsky, to Count Orlov. He was a strange man, a monster really at two metres in height and additional to being a murderous fiend he was a mad geneticist who loved to breed things and so he created the Orlov Trotter, the Orlov Chicken and the fastest dog in all of Europe, the Borzoi. Borzoi is the Russian word for swift.

I came back from Russia with a Borzoi obsession. After all, what could possibly be the more perfect pet when you are living in Ponsonby than a gigantic, incredibly fast hunting hound that was purpose-bred to kill timber wolves by running them down across the tundra before crushing their windpipe with a deftly executed death bite.

A bit of research yielded only one breeder in New Zealand. I went to visit her farm but was not allowed to touch her puppies because I had been covid-vaccinated and as she put it “my spike proteins could turn her dog's blood black and make them sterile”.

So, long story short, we imported Iggy from Queensland.

He arrived off the plane, four months old and already the size of a small labrador, and he just kept growing. He is, without a doubt, the biggest dog in Auckland (seriously, I challenge you to find one that is larger). And, a bit like a gremlin (don't get it wet, avoid bright lights, don't feed it after midnight) he came with a list of non-negotiable operating instructions. The most crucial and debilitating of these is this: Iggy's abilities as an athlete (his top speed is 60km an hour and he has the agility of Simone Biles) is such a lethal combination that under no circumstances is he ever allowed off a leash unless he's in an enclosed space.

It's a tough gig being a permanently leashed dog. But you know what makes it really tough? Well, like Satre said – hell is other people. And I'm sure what Satre actually meant to say is “Hell is other people who have their own dogs off the leash and make utterly no attempt to control them and keep them out of your face and seem to think that it is just fine and dandy and then, and then, and OHMYGOD then, they will get angry with you when their annoying little Shih Tzu has been pestering your dog and following him and sniffing him and barking at him and goading him until at last your dog lunges at this little pest and then the person with the out-of-control off-leash dog suddenly pays attention and unbelievably takes the moral high ground and calls your dog ‘A monster!'”

To be clear: Iggy is not a vicious dog. He has never shown the slightest inclination to bite or attack. He's a gentle giant, albeit a descendant of snarling assassins of timber wolves. But like most Russians, he looks like the bad guy. If he were a little dog, Iggy could run up to you barking his head off and snapping and you'd just giggle and go “what a funny lil dude!”. If he were a little dog he could jump up on you and scratch your legs or steal your sandwich off the table and you wouldn't think ‘why doesn't someone teach you some manners FFS'. If he were a little dog he could bear down on you at speed across the sands of the beach at Herne Bay and you'd think it was hilarious not life-threatening.

Iggy, as a big dog, does not get these privileges. And nor am I asking for them. All I am actually asking for is for other people to revise their blatant double-standard, do their job and control their dogs. But I clearly don't understand right? Obviously, your off-leash dog is special. Your dog is not like other dogs. It would never run into traffic because it suddenly spotted a cat. Your dog is entirely predictable with no impulses! It would never step on the street at the wrong moment and cause someone to crash their car. It knows the road code! Your dog would never pester my dog while you walk along concertedly pretending you can't see this happening as you focus on texting someone on your phone. It has it's own social media account and loves texting too!

Here is the thing: your dog is not different or special. Your dog is annoying and downright dangerous to others, and if you continue to refuse to put it on a leash, you must manage it regardless and keep it the hell away from my dog who is understandably struggling with the fact that he's bound down by the chains I have put upon him while his unleashed assailant can goad him utterly unfettered. And if you still don't care about others, think about your dog. It's entirely possible that if he comes near me one more time my spike proteins could turn his blood black.