Not an easy problem, therefore no easy solution.

In a blog post my friend Paul Baird makes the point that no-one and no institution is above the law. He writes "If any Priest or person holding a similar position is found to withhold any knowledge that would permit the perversion of the course of justice then they should face the full force of the law. The confessional has no penitent/confessor protection, and none should be assumed or actually given."

In principle, you have to agree with this, that the law is the law and no-one and no thing is exempt. And of course I'd want information on a crime to be passed to the authorities, child abuse maybe more than any. But there is also a problem. Unenforceable law is normally bad law. A law that says that something said by one person in secret to another must be reported is unenforceable. No-one knows, and the person told simply shrugs his shoulders and walks away. Unless confessions are monitored by secret surveillance (in itself unacceptable) how is such a thing to be enforced? Law like that brings the concept of law itself into disrepute and disrespect.

I'd like to think that there is another solution - and admittedly this has not worked with the Catholic Church in the past and probably could not work perfectly in the future. It involves the education of the clergy until and so that they are on side with action against child abuse and other serious crime. As a former clergyman who has heard confessions (in the Church of England) a priest has a sanction. He can withhold absolution, or make it dependent on the penitent taking a certain course of action. In such a case he could require the penitent to turn himself in, and make absolution conditional upon that. Now, assuming the penitent took confession and absolution seriously, you have a strong lever. The problem is that most abusers do not see anything at all wrong with what they have done. They know it is against the law, but that, in their eyes, does not make it wrong. So I cannot see that such a person would have any need to go to confession in the first place.

Many years ago I knew a clergyman, now dead, who plainly had a strong interest in children. No-one suspected how far that interest went - it just was not on our radar all that time ago. So everyone who knew him was shocked and horrified when he was arrested. On the occasion in question he had been bathing a young boy and touched him "inappropriately". The child told his parents, and the law took its course and my friend got 2 years, suspended. Whether the leniency of the sentence reflects the nature of the assault or attitudes at the time or both I cannot tell. He resigned his job, and as soon as the period of suspension was over the church found him another one.

My friend was shaken up, not because of what he had done, but because of the outcry. His view was that he was in love with the child, that he was giving him pleasure, and there was nothing wrong with that, indeed, love is of God. Of course it was technically against the law, but until relatively recently so were homosexual acts between consenting adult males, and so was driving at above the speed limit, which the majority of motorists just did all the time with no ill consequences.

Why would a person who thought like that take his crime to confession, which depends on acknowledging actions as wrong and sinful? Paedophile acts are rightly criminal offences. But that does not make them wrong in the eyes of perpetrators. Until they see the desires they have, and cannot avoid having, as being misdirected and acting on those urges as wrong, harmful and worse, the problem will persist.

Making Progress

Since he arrived from Collie Rescue on 3 April 2011, Claude has been a challenge. Issues over doorways, issues over food, issues over being brushed, issues over the car, and above all, common to them all, willingness to use his teeth. On top of that he's been to the vet for surgery twice, once because of gum disease which meant 10 teeth had to be removed, and once because he had foreign bodies in his ear, and, as it proved, embedded in his gum too. He was thin to start with and lost weight at an alarming rate. While he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to go into the great outdoors he was incredibly timid with other dogs and very wary of people too. We had a major falling out when he grabbed hold of my wrist with his (remaining) teeth, and hung on, shaking my arm as though it was something he needed to kill.

Bit by bit we've come to understand The Little Man, and to set boundaries and routines that seem to help him. I'll never forget the time he decided not to come when called in the park, and headed off the other way. I will never know what was going on in his head, but I do know that when I finally caught up with him he expected to be hit, and flinched. The brush may well remind him of being groomed, possibly for the first time, in rescue, when, as his coat was so matted, it had to be shaved off almost to the skin. I can imagine that he fought, and he had scars where the clippers had cut him and must have hurt.

Living with him day by day it is easy to be overwhelmed by the effort sometimes needed. His feeding routine, which has certainly taken the anxiety out of meal times for all parties, canine and human, is time consuming and laborious. But he is undoubtedly making progress, and we are enjoying seeing him take strides forward into becoming a more confident, less neurotic dog. Sometimes he seems to take a big step forward almost out of nowhere, like the time, after being lifted into the car 4 times a day, he suddenly leaped in from a standing start and left me open-mouthed. Or the time, after running back to the car whenever he saw a group of two or more dogs approaching ever since we'd had him, he mingled with a group of 7 dogs, exchanging rear-end sniffs, as though he'd been doing it all his life.

This morning was just one of many occasions when we met someone who saw Claude earlier, and has not seem him since, and who expressed their surprise at how much he had come on. Well, he has. After a month of weight loss he stopped losing it, then started gaining. I am expecting him to be heavier still when he is next weighed, so his exercise quota can be increased. He is probably just passing a birthday as he is moulting (male Rough Collies moult once a year) and his coat no longer feels like an out-of-condition horse and is actually soft and smoother. Maybe it will get glossy in time. And he is actually going up to dogs he doesn't know and greeting them, if a bit gingerly at first. This morning he was milling about with 3 Labs, a Spaniel, 2 Great Danes and a Mastiff. You have to remember his flight for the car the first time he met any one of these dogs to appreciate what this means.

So I thought I'd post some pictures, gathering together a few from my Facebook and Picasa albums, to show the road he has travelled and down which we hope he will proceed far in the months and years ahead.

First, Claude as he was when we first met him at the Kennel where he lodged after Collie Rescue got him. This is my first sight of The Little Man, and his of me. I must admit I wondered what we were taking on. His eyes were sad and lifeless; he had no interest in being stroked, rather the reverse. He plainly was not sociable.

Claude was very reluctant to go indoors - if only we'd realised then what was going on - and when he was finally taken inside, he lay on the mat and tried to ignore everything happening around him. It is easy to see now that the poor little fellow had no experience of the good things of life.

We tried to make him welcome in his new home, but looking back, he must have found this a very stressful experience. Here he was, able to wander round the garden and come and go at will, and the people were trying to handle him - all of this was probably new to him. We were told he was 7 - and that may not be far out, but when the vet saw him the next day he thought he was at least 10, he was in such poor condition.

A couple of weeks later, having been introduced to Twywell Hills and Dales and having met some friendly other dogs, and now that we felt confident of his recall, he was taken on a longer walk with another human, someone he'd only just met, and her dog. So off we set, Jill and Ozzie the Black Lab, and Bonnie and I with Claude. He had not been in the company of another dog for more than a few minutes before, so this was a major challenge. But I knew Ozzie from before and if there was any dog Claude would not have a problem with, I was sure it was he. So off we set.

And here we are, heading for the woods, everyone getting on fine. I hoped Claude was picking up on my confidence that all would be well.

My next idea for helping Claude socialise was to invite two dogs he knew from the park into his territory. We had a head start here as he really likes their owner, Sarah. He was soon happy enough with Lucy & Lillie, but when Sarah lay on the grass and tried to encourage him to play, he just didn't know what to do.

Now here is Claude a few weeks later, in mid June. Note not only the new hair around his face, but the confident air with which he surveys the picnic area at Hills & Dales, watching the other dogs, most of which he now knows quite well, several of which he has been on walks with.







Compare this shot on the left with Claude after his walk with Ozzie and Jill, below. Can it be the same dog?

Bit by bit, sometimes in small increments, sometimes with great leaps forward, Claude has been growing out of his old timid self into his new life as a confident, if rather arthritic, gent in late-ish middle age. He does still have his foibles, and he does like to test the limits from time to time, but he is definitely both fitter and happier.

 Here is Claude today, at the end of July, after all but 4 months with us. He'd not met Misty before, but he went up to her (he always approaches girls these days) they got on, and she made every effort to come along on his walk. He must have something she liked.

Claude does know how to have fun now. He runs playfully from one to the other of us, chases the girls he thinks he has a chance with, bounds around forgetting his painful joints when he is feeling exuberant, and so on. He can't keep up the running all that long, but he can trot for quite a while. He looks forward to going out, gets excited when I put on my dog-walk clothes, and generally gives the impression that life is pretty good on the whole. He has entertained more visitors at home (two long-haired dachshund girls that he knows quite well) and is generally becoming sociable.

Up to now he has usually resisted any grooming or deseeding (long hair + country walk = seeds in coat). But today for the first time he took no noticed of the comb in his coat, and didn't even resist when we took seeds out of his rear paws, up to now something he hated. He even stepped into the foot bath when we got home.- that is a real first.

Here he is at Twywell Hills & Dales picnic area, posing for his photo, with his family. Is this the same dog as the one pictured at the top of the page? Yes, but also no: he is a different dog in that he has acquired a raft of new characteristics which we are proud and pleased to see. We hope he will be with us, and that his personality will continue to grow, for a long while yet.