The Angry Man, The Angry Dog & Me

Why we should all try and be kind to each other

Ralph holding his special yellow lead which says ‘nervous’ on it

I have two stories for you: one about an angry man, and one about an angry dog.

The angry man.

I was sitting on the steps with my eco-activist friends in the centre of my local town, Malvern, in silent vigil for the Earth. It was a beautiful day in late September and I was relishing the sun as it kissed my face.

A man walked up the steps alongside us, his wife trailing behind. He looked ordinary - slender, well dressed - and a part of me expected him to say ‘thank you’ or to give us a warm nod, as other members of the public sometimes do. Instead he leaned over and hissed at us,

“I hope it rains on you.”

My first reaction was amused shock. I turned to my friend Iszi and said, “I haven’t heard that one before.” I was all too familiar with the other anti-activism tropes - 'get a job!’, ‘bloody hippies’, ‘do you drive/own a mobile phone you idiot hypocrite?’, ‘we’re fine in the UK, China is the problem’, and of course the (rarer but still present) classic, ‘there’s no such thing as climate change, you’re wasting your time’.

We were sitting quietly in the sun, with love and grief for dear Earth in our hearts. There was something about this man’s pronouncement upon us that just felt so mean.

Later I bumped into him in town and said, “You sounded really angry earlier when you said you hoped it rained on us.” He launched into a furious speech about activism in London, and asked me if I had a car.

The anger bloomed in me like red ink thrown into clear water. I didn’t manage to listen to him properly. I didn’t let his anger run out of steam before asking him another question. I didn’t want to understand him - I wanted him to know he’d hurt me, and to hurt him back. He soon stormed off as I called after him, “I hope it doesn’t rain on you,” the coldness in my voice betraying my true feelings.

After walking all the way home, sucking in slow breaths, the adrenaline was still pumping through me.

The steps where we vigil, and some of the vigil gang

The angry dog.

Kaspa and I had driven to Worcester so we could walk the dogs along the racecourse, which is edged by the River Severn. As the dogs pelted after each other we could hear a hullaballoo ahead of us and as we neared the bridge we saw maybe a hundred boats in or out of the water. We’d stumbled upon the regional kayaking heats, and we stood at the riverside to watch them get ready to race.

Ralph is our ‘problem dog’. He wasn’t socialised with other dogs when he was young, and he came to us at seven months old, frozen with anxiety. As he relaxed and the frozenness melted he started to lunge and yell at other dogs. We’ve worked with trainers for a couple of years and he is much improved but he still has a low threshold for peril and we have to keep a close eye on him.

Twice in his life I have become too relaxed about his new ability to meet other dogs appropriately and have let go of his long yellow lead only to see him run at another dog, snapping aggressively near their head and body. The first time it happened was a year ago, and the second time was on our walk back from watching the kayaks which, with the mess of noise, crowds and boats, had been very stressful for Ralph.

I pulled Ralph away, apologised profusely to the owner as she dragged her own dog away, and then a few minutes later burst into tears at the violence that had erupted from Ralph. I was filled with shame at the horrible experience I’d inflicted on someone else through my own negligence. He hasn’t ever bitten a human or another dog, but this aggressive snapping could well be the step before it.

Ralph’s soft belly which lies underneath all the self-protective shoutiness (pictured with his friend Aiko)

Why am I telling you these stories?

Because, on a walk with my friend Iszi yesterday, it occurred to me that Ralph’s reaction and the man’s verbal abuse were in the same family.

I was clear where Ralph’s apparently sudden outburst had come from. He’d learnt when a puppy that he wasn’t safe around other dogs, and so he shouted and lunged at them before they were tempted to come over and attack him. He’d probably felt out of control all morning, around people with strange large objects on their backs and loud noises and dogs coming up close to him, and his nerves were super-jangled. I am guessing that this dog ‘looking at him funny’ was the last straw - his self-protective instinct slid from fear into anger as he decided he was being threatened and so rushed over to scream at this poor unsuspecting dog to leave him alone.

Who knows what the angry man’s history is. I guess that he reads the papers that tell him that ‘eco-zealots’ like me are misguided, hypocritical (of course we are this!), and dangerously taking power into their own hands. Maybe he has parts that feel powerless or guilty and his anger is protecting him from the ‘judgements’ of activists (people often misinterpret our protest as guilting individuals into giving up the things they love like holidays abroad or their cars, rather than the most important aim of changing our governments, oil companies and broader systems). Maybe he’d been held up by a protest in London last year and missed a job interview or a hospital appointment. Maybe he doesn’t want to think about the climate crisis because parts of him are afraid for his children. Maybe he’d just had a really terrible day. Who knows.¹

I do trust that his angry part would have had good, understandable reasons for its rage. I probably wouldn’t agree with his logic if I knew it, but I would have empathy for him, and would be able to see him as an ordinary human who got angry, rather than just a mean, ignorant, horrible person.

I know that Ralph is a sweet, loving dog. I know that his aggressive snapping was a last resort.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I’m not upset with myself any more for not having more patience with the angry man, or for failing my angry dog. I also had reasons for my reactions and behaviour in each circumstance - my built-up fury about the climate emergency, my desperate hope that Ralph could just be a ‘normal dog’, and so on.

Will I try to do better next time? Yes. Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t manage it.

Will I remember Ralph when I next encounter someone’s apparently unjustified anger? I hope I will.

Are we all carrying sorrow and suffering? Should we be as kind to each other as we can possibly manage to be?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Go gently,
Satya <3

Tell me: When is it a struggle for you to be kind to yourself or to someone else? How would it be to get curious about the suffering and sorrow they (or those parts of you) are carrying, and the self-protection they’ve needed to develop over time? Can you find a grain of curiosity or compassion for them?

1. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that it’s always ‘okay’ for us to vent our anger onto other people because we always have good reasons. It’s important to set appropriate boundaries for ourselves around other people’s anger and violence, call them out, seek help from others or the authorities etc. We can understand why someone is the way they are AND know that it’s not acceptable for them to act that way around us.