Dialogue: For a dog's life it isn't all that bad

By JOE BENNET

I like to spend money on my dogs but I can't find much to buy for them.

A new collar every couple of years, perhaps, sometimes a lead. They don't thank me for the lead. They don't like leads. They like freedom. They like the world and they like novelty. I admire that.

I buy them food and it pleases them but there is no point in buying them fancy food. They like crude bones with gobbets of meat and fat and ligament buried in the crevices.

They can work at these gobbets, applying extraordinary force to the task by pinning the bones with their paws, gripping with their precise and deadlocked teeth and hauling with the massive muscles of their necks.

I like to watch them. They do not care if I watch them or not.

The dogs' lives depend on me. They would find it hard to survive in the wild because game is rare and if they attacked farm animals, they would be shot.

Each night when the dogs sleep they do not know what will happen tomorrow. They curl up owning nothing. As far as they know there is nothing for breakfast. Every tomorrow is an adventure which starts afresh.

They sleep in my bedroom but if I slept in the garden, they would sleep there, too. On cold nights they curl in on themselves and generate prodigious warmth. They sleep in the same fur on hot nights and cold nights and they smell only of dog. They drink only water.

In the morning they do not know whether I will take them out. When I do they rejoice. The hills always thrill them.

When nothing is happening, they sleep. They sleep lightly and wake on the instant.

D.J. Enright wrote a poem called The Poor Wake Up Quickly. It isn't much of a poem but I've always thought well of the title. It's pure dog. And when they wake they stretch, luxuriating in the strength and lissomeness of their flesh and guarding it wisely. They tend to their bodies with their tongues and teeth but they never clean the house. If they are sick, they sometimes eat it back up.

If I went away and did not return, they would pine briefly but they would not cling to my memory. They would attach their affections to whoever fed them.

If their new owners treated them worse than I do, they would not make comparisons. They would be less joyous but they would not fret. They would expect nothing, hope for nothing and accept the good bits with relish.

When they are ill or damaged, they make no complaint. They curl and lick and wait to get better. They do not imagine what will happen if they do not get better. They do not dread. Theirs is the state of most creatures on the planet. It is a state of unknowing. It is a state of acceptance. It is not humanity.

They are not vain and they do not accrete possessions. They do not consider themselves better or worse than others. They will fight if they have to for their territory or their food, but they prefer to warn people off. They pay no attention to tomorrow.

Though people often personify them, dogs do not lose their dogness. They are incorruptible. My dogs and I spring from the same process of evolution. In them I can see a lot of where I came from and a lot of what I retain.

And I can see what I have lost by being human. I can see the bad bits of the bargain. I can see the crippling effects of self-consciousness. My dogs are my touchstone, my rock of comparison.

Many of the qualities we love to see in people are exhibited full time in the dogs. Many of the things that we do not like to see in people, the dogs are innocent of.

That is why I cherish my dogs. And because they are beautiful. And because they appear to love me.

One of them has just come to nuzzle my elbow. I read him these words and he wagged his tail. But had it been a story of abuse that I had read him, he would also have wagged it. He has a bad leg. It was shattered in a car crash some years ago. The vet put it back together and it served, but now it has deteriorated again.

He carries it off the ground. He went for treatment today but the likelihood is that at some time in the next year or two I shall have to decide whether to have his leg cut off or have him killed.

Whenever I think of having to make that decision, I start crying.