Okay, I may have misled you with the title a little bit there. My dog was not racist, although it did hold some pretty forthright views whenever the mood took it. No, it was only my love of the beautiful game that caused it to be shunned by friends and family alike.
The story begins way back in the time when modern Ireland was just a medium sized pimple on an Irish farmers’ back – the summer of 1990. We look back on this time now with rose-tinted, reeling in the years glasses but really Ireland had been a pretty depressing place for a long time. This was something that got through even to me, a middle-class kid from a nice area. All my older sisters and brothers were either rockers with steel-toed boots or Smith’s fans, which regularly made dinners at my house an exercise in existential angst.
In the middle of all this the country got a little morale boost, the Irish football team got to the World Cup in Italy. This was my first real experience of a national ‘event’ and I was reeled in immediately, collecting every players Panini sticker I could find and pretending to be Roberto Baggio when a ball dropped to my feet.
When the World Cup started however it was soon the Irish players that became seared into mine, and the nations, consciousness. We got out of the group stage in spectacularly boring style (we drew all three games) and went on to play the Romanian’s, themselves only coming out of a Communist induced depression.
After the dullest game since the last time Ireland played, the game ended 0-0 and went to a penalty shoot-out. After explaining to a nation who had always thought that a round ball should go over the bar what a penalty shoot-out was, George Hamilton began to describe the action in all its tension filled glory.
Penalty after penalty was expertly tucked away until a young man called (hang on, quick visit to Google needed here…) Daniel Timofte stepped up, only for it to be saved by the man whose image would be plastered over every available space in the Republic of Ireland for years to come, Packie Bonner. This Donegal man suddenly became my hero.
Half of my friends went out to buy the famous yellow jersey he wore and when they were sold out, the grey second jersey became all the rage. The biggest long-term impact it had on my family however was that I named my dog after him.
I named my dog Packie.
Now, I was seven at the time and I know for a fact that I had never seen a person of colour before. Ireland just didn’t have any people of colour living here at the time; the immigration boom was only just about to happen. It was only a couple of years ago that I saw the first black person walking through my hometown. He was so out of place that I actually had to do a second take; much like many Dubliners did in the 1990’s when immigrants from all over the world began arriving here looking for work.
Having said all this, I still had a dog whose name was Packie. Coincidentally, she was also of a brown colour with flowing hair and a pointed mouth. If a racist was going to give this dog a nickname, I picked one that would come close to it. Indeed, they probably would have used the same spelling.
Walking the dog became an issue. I would regularly bring it to places where I could let it off the lead, meaning I had to call it back. The cry of ‘Packie! Packie!’ would be regularly heard across the Killiney foothills, causing (to me) unnoticed consternation from passers-by.
The culmination of this, and the day I discovered racism existed, was when I brought Packie for a run along the sea front. As this was now the mid-nineties Ireland was awash with multiculturalism and the people were starting to get their teeth stuck into good ‘aul racism talk. After being spanked by the British for 800 years, I guess some people thought they could get there own back.
This day had brought out a young family from the sub-continent (this is the problem with talking about racism. Can I not just assume they were from Pakistan?) Unfortunately, the woman was wearing a full-length Burka – something that freaked the shit out of my dog, who proceeded to pelt full speed directly at them.
The woman, hearing shouting behind her, turned to see a dog flying towards her, teeth bared and a boy standing behind it shouting ‘Packie! Packie!’
They must have thought their plane had been diverted to Alabama.
I am still thankful to this day that my dog would never have bitten anyone and only grabbed onto her clothes. However repeatedly shouting ‘Get off her, Packie!’ in the melee probably didn't endear me any further to the terrified woman, or her family.
So apologies for my racist dog, it didn’t mean it, and neither did I.