May 18th. The Moral Barking.
It is not fair, I say to the Owner, to call me a Bad Dog because I Barked at the Angry Parent. I am a Dog. It is a Species Norm for me to Bark. A Moral Dog cannot be Good or Bad in such matters, he can only be […]
December 3rd. Greenhouse Gases.
We have to deal with Greenhouse Gases in order to Save the Planet, I say. I am wearing my Superdog cape and am anxious to start on the Greenhouses. The Time for Action is Now. Caspar, aka my Morally Equal Companion, Fluffy, says that the secret of Victory is to […]
November 23rd. The sinister pigeon.
I am in the kitchen when I see it watching me. It is hunched in the tree, still and dark and implacable. It is very menacing. Come out from under the table Hergest, says the Owner. We need to go out. I cannot, I say, a pigeon is menacing me. […]
Oct 28th. The Amoral Tomato.
Caspar and I have been practising our eye rolling. You never know when Superdog and his trusty sidekick Fluffy will need to resort to such measures. Lucifer with the nose cage says that when he rolls his eyes at humans they always stop arguing and often also back away, particularly […]
Oct 25th. The very long stick.
It seems that, like the Moral Dog, the Owner has primeval instincts. When Primeval Man walked the frozen wastes with the Ancestral Dog she had more to face than the Sabre Toothed Cat and the Evil Velociraptor. She also faced the Ancestral Viper. This explains why the Owner is seized […]
Oct 24th. Fluorescence.
The Owner, obliviously munching on her half of the cheese scone was muttering about the Prime Minister and I was stalking. The squirrel was being extremely provocative. For a start it was on the ground, foraging for nuts. Secondly its tail was twitching. And thirdly it was flaunting its fluff […]
Oct 17th. The tentacles.
The Owner went out without me today. She was gone for hours. The dog sitter and I watched some interesting and informative films. Then she returned as if she had not abandoned me to whatever fate might bring. What if the earth had frozen through some terrible climatic catastrophe whilst […]
Oct 12th. The Call of the Cheese.
The Owner says Morality is an absolute which gives rise to certain rules. I say all rules are subject to context. Morality itself, I say, is contextual. Today is a case in point. It began as an ordinary day. The sun had risen, the birds were singing, the squirrels were […]
Oct 9th. The Ancestral Dog and the Moral Dog.
There seems to be some confusion between the Moral Dog and the Ancestral Dog. The Ancestral Dog marks out his territory. That’s how other, slightly less moral, slightly more fluffy dogs know that it is his. Within this territory the Ancestral Dog defends his Ancestral Human against all comers. This […]
Oct 2nd. The Book of Knowledge.
The Owner says I should not have eaten the Book. She says she required the Book in order to digest its contents. I don’t understand this. She claims she has been digesting its contents for weeks yet she she hadn’t even taken a single bite. And how is she so […]
Sept 29th. The Dire Wolf and the Ancestral Cat.
There are Some Dogs who don’t share their ball. The Owner says such dogs should all be called Boris. (I say I can’t always tell when she is joking. She says she never jokes about anyone called Boris.) Such dogs carry with them an Aura of Capitalism, the antithesis of […]
Sept 8th. Speciesism
Charles Darwin suggested that all animals are shaped by the need to compete with other species in order to find an ecological niche in which they can succeed. Kind of like a chair, which you shape exactly to fit. It’s an odd idea, since it suggests I fit exactly the […]
Sept 6th. I am Wolf.
Visited butcher today with Woman. What a man. Gave woman pieces of fresh sheep in bag. Woman gave one of them to me. Realised true nature of self at last. Canids may have evolved to make poodles but we are all still canids. I am Dog, but beneath I am […]
Sept 6th. King Solomon’s Dog.
The world was not always as it is today, so manicured and tidy, with bags for poo and packets for cheese and Owners who needs to be taken around on leads to stop them from running in the road. Once the world was new and savage, a place of trees […]
Hergest, a Hound's Philosophy 