A DOG cull is under way in Beijing, where strays are being rounded up and where the authorities have imposed a ban on dogs over 35 centimetres tall. The official explanation says that these measures are designed to combat the Chinese city’s rabies problem, but plenty of websites maintain that this is merely a sign of Beijing getting “in order” before the 2008 Olympics.

Clearing the streets of dogs is something of an Olympic city tradition. It also happened before the Games of 2004, in Athens.

Now, as a London resident and a dog owner, one could be forgiven for experiencing a cold shudder at this point. If the reliable forerunner of an Olympic Games is a centrally enforced pooch-purge, then whither our pets in the run-up to 2012?

Of course, anxiety in this area will probably prove needless. I’ve scanned the proposals for the London Olympics and plans for a citywide round-up of dogs over 35cm do not feature. That’s a comfort.

Then again, I don’t suppose dog culling formed a prominent part of the original Beijing bid document, either. I suspect that if the topic was addressed at all, it was buried in a brief footnote on page 347. “Oh, and don’t worry about the dogs, by the way. We’ll deal with the dogs.”

Also, they said that the London Olympics would cost £3.8 billion. This week, it became apparent that it might actually be closer to £6 billion. So why trust what is in the bid document?

It was, then, mainly with a view to preparing for the worst, but also with no small amount of trepidation, that I entered the kitchen this week to measure my dog. I had been unable to obtain official clarification on whether the 35cm stipulated by Beijing is a floor-to-spine measurement, or a floor-to-head measurement, there being a significant difference with most of the household breeds in a standing position.

Also, clipped or unclipped? The International Olympic Committee offers no guidance on this, even though the length of a dog’s coat can have a considerable impact on its height, not to mention its overall mass and sense of menace.

But these were irrelevant considerations, in my case — as I suppose I knew, deep down, that they would be. My dog, a Portuguese water dog, is, as I frequently find myself shame-facedly explaining, normally to people who are backed up against a wall, “large for the breed”. Which is code for, “I thought I was getting a cocker spaniel and I ended up with a horse”.

Sure enough, he clocked in at about 55cm, floor-to-spine, which would put him bang in the Beijing line of fire.

That doesn’t make him a monster, though. Far from it. Indeed, when you get to know his boundaries — what he likes and doesn’t like, how far you can push him and when you should simply back off and obey — you realise that he is, at heart, a loveable old softie. That thing he does with his teeth? That’s just his way of saying hello.

Accordingly, I don’t necessarily see my dog as an out-and-out threat to the smooth running of the 2012 Olympics, nor is he likely to prevent it being the spectacularly successful international occasion that we all hope it will. Unless, of course, he gets loose on the track during the heats for the 100 metres. He does enjoy a chase. But honestly (and I’d like this on the record here and now), he’s only playing.

However, the thought of having to balance the successful delivery of the Games in 2012 against my dog’s life has left me in a quandary. I wholeheartedly supported the bid for the London Olympics. I believe the Games will bring much-needed regeneration to an area of the East End, revolutionise the city’s infrastructure, boost the nation’s health and self-esteem and leave a sporting legacy that will inspire young athletes, not only in London but the length and breadth of the country, for generations.

At the same time, if people’s pets are being marched off to vans and an uncertain destiny, my instinct is that the much-vaunted “Olympic feel-good factor” could diminish. To put it personally, I might not be comfortable with the thought that my dog has to die just so the world’s best marathon runners can go down The Mall and a bunch of swimmers can party till they drop in Stratford.

Again, though, I am getting ahead of myself. London, after all, is not Beijing and most likely we will never see the time when Lord Coe comes for our dogs. Not that I imagine it would be Coe in person, in any event. As the figurehead of the London Olympics, the legendary former middle-distance runner will doubtless have better things to do, as the occasion nears, than go door-to-door with a net and a plank of four by two.

Nonetheless, come a cull, I would be interested to know how Coe would propose breaking the news to my children, in whose lives the dog is a central figure, a faithful friend and the valued teacher of all sorts of important life-lessons about . . . well, about dogs, mostly.

I wouldn’t fancy my chances of squaring it with them. “I know he’s gone. But be proud, everyone, because he had a lovely life and we sacrificed him for three possibly nation-changing weeks of table tennis, kayaking and rapid-fire 50-metres pistol shooting.” I would defy Coe to look deep into my dog’s sorrowful, nut-brown eyes at such a time and tell me that the London Olympics were worth it.

Actually, I defy him to look deep into the dog’s eyes in any case. The dog hates that.

No laughing matter for England

IN CROATIA, it was the grinning face of Borat that repeatedly mocked England from the electronic advertising hoardings, crying “Jagshemash!” exactly as Paul Robinson goofed to let in the second goal. This week in Amsterdam, England toiled against rotated invitations from the sidelines to compare and contrast Jackass 2.

Clearly there is some sort of film industry conspiracy to undermine Steve McClaren in these sensitive early stages of his managerial era.

Oh my God — they bit Kenny

FOR Neil Warnock, there was a simple lesson this week in the incident in which his goalkeeper had an eyebrow bitten off during a scrap with one of his friends in the car park of a curry house in Halifax. “The lads have got to learn that wherever you are when you’re a Premiership footballer, you’re news,” the Sheffield United manager said.

Truly this was one of those episodes that reveals our baffling double standards. You or I are free to go out and break a bottle over a friend’s head before getting our eyebrow chewed off and adjourning to casualty for 12 stitches at 3am, without anyone making anything of it. Footballers, such as Paddy Kenny, aren’t so fortunate.

It’s another example of the insanely intrusive media scrutiny that today’s top players must battle against.