We have been watching rugby, a game which involves a group of men chasing a ball up and down a field, with occasional interventions by a whistling Owner to takes it off them then throws it back. These men have the Souls of Dogs. The Owner cheered when the Men […]
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 […]
The Owner is obsessing about philosophy. She is writing her PhD on the philosophy and law of organ donation and she keeps talking about deemed consent. This is when someone is understood to have consented to donate their organs because they did not refuse. It is possible, if the conditions […]
Today when I wake it is raining heavily. Usually when this happens we stay indoors till it stops, but today the Owner says it isn’t going to stop, the lead is produced, and out, it seems, we go. Come on, she says, we are in it together. Solidarity, Hergest, she […]
This morning, walking through the park, I found a particularly well-concealed piece of silver foil filled with attractive white crystals. I was just beginning to snack, relying on the well established common law principle that if something is abandoned it is res nullius (nobody’s thing) and finders are keepers, when […]
Well. I had not realised the true purpose of the shower. Identity theft. We entered the shower smelling largely as we should. The Owner, admittedly, still bore more than a hint of chemical geranium tempered with chloroform, which she seems to preload herself with every morning. I was ripe, a […]
I like it when the Owner stops at Le Pain Quotidien to buy a scone because it comes with accompanying cheese slices and as you may have surmised, I have an affinity for cheese. Or so I thought. How was I to know that you cannot generalise all cheese served […]
The Owner has been reading the story of my namesake, the Hergest Hound, dog companion of Sir Thomas Vaughan of Hergest, a fifteenth century landowner who lived at Hergest Hall on the border between Herefordshire and Wales. The Hergest Hound had his own bedroom at the top of the house. […]
It is important, for the Moral Dog, to have autonomy. Both Kant and John Stuart Mill were clear on that, and they didn’t agree on much else, I can tell you. The Owner says autonomy is the capacity to be my Own Dog. She suggests that when I decide to […]
The Owner says we should go to Obedience classes. I said fine. Although I don’t think she’s that bad.
I know there’s something down there. I just know. I can’t explain it. I didn’t do it just to pull the rosemary out, it just came out with the soil. Anyway, she can always put it back. She’d have thanked me if it had been the Lost Ark. She says […]
The Owner asks me what is so interesting about fox poo. Where do I even begin? Sadly, it turns out that the question was rhetorical. It is clear that the Owner has no real interest in understanding the magical lure of fox poo. As I begin to explain the lead […]
Today we visit the vet. The vet comments on my tail, which is white (whilst the rest of me is mainly brown). The Vet says not all dogs of my variety keep their tails. He says I seem glad that I still have it. Glad that I still have it? […]
Julian Savulescu says that moral enhancement is essential for humanity to triumph because human beings won’t become moral enough fast enough to save themselves just by trying to be better people, even given that they have Greta Thunberg. He means he thinks that science should be used to make people morally […]
Life is not always just. The Owner says what goes around comes around but this takes absolutely no account of the basic unfairness of pigeons. Pigeons cheat. I put a lot of effort in. Watching, thinking, stalking, tracking, creeping. The creeping, in particularly, takes a lot of thought. A lot. […]
Hergest, a Hound's Philosophy 