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INDIGENES AND residents of the sleepy town of Tefle in the Volta Region might love and adore former President Jerry John Rawlings, but not his canine pets. Although they show their love for him by referring to him as Yevu or whiteman in the local Ewe language, they have in recent times become targets of unprovoked attacks by his truant canine co-inhabitants in the expensive resort. If that is their reward for idolizing their light-skinned tribesman, then it is unfair and absurd. He has not even bothered to sympathise with them as they suffer the incessant threat of his dogs that continue to charge on the residents without provocation when they are unleashed unto the neighbourhood. Keeping Alsatians, Dobermans, Labradors, Rottweiler, Boerbulls or whatever exotic canines they might be, is a status symbol of their owners, the former President being no exception. His lifestyle has changed enormously over the years away from the pre-1979 days, with the keeping of expensive and exotic man-chewing dogs being his newfound fondness. We have no qualms about the former President keeping tigers or leopards around his residences provided he keeps the carnivores under leash and prevents them from constituting a danger to neighbours. He has after all departed from the path of socialism and embraced head-on the capitalist ideology and the flashiness which goes with it. The veterinary laws appear to have been relaxed in the case of the former President�s dogs because nobody dares to ask for evidence of their anti-rabies vaccination when they bite somebody. It is a fact that when someone suffers a dog bite, the first question posed by the medical doctor is the provision of anti-rabies vaccination by the owner of the canine. When someone responded to the attacks of one of the dogs recently by inflicting multiple cuts on the canine, the police moved in quickly to arrest and bring him to the Police headquarters. That is the irony of policing in the country today. Not even the Volta Regional Police Headquarters is qualified to handle the case of an attack on the dog of former President Rawlings. We can bet that had such bites been inflicted by another rich Ghanaian�s dog, Mr. Rawlings would have found his way to the rooftops to make ugly noises about expensive lifestyles. As we compose this commentary, he is yet to issue a statement or apologize to the victims of the bites by his dogs and to undertake to keep them under leash. Yevu is infallible and so residents of Tefle might have to learn to live with his human-chewing canines.