Joe Bennett: Dogs are in every way our moral superiors

I don't think I have it in me to give my heart to a dog again Photo / 123rf

OPINION

I am typing slowly because of Little Boo. He is sitting on my lap and has his head on my left elbow.
If I try to type with my left hand he looks up in reproach and sighs. And since, even on a good day with both hands available and the wind behind me, I am a three-finger typist at best, this is going to take a while.

Little Boo is not my dog. Nor is he my sort of dog. My sort of dog has always been, well, dog-sized, thigh-height, pattable without bending, the size all dogs would be in a few generations if we ditched canine eugenics.

Little Boo is a mongrel, but all the constituent breeds of his mongrelhood have been selectively bred for the handbag. There's chihuahua in there and some French griffon and perhaps a dash of pug. The result is a beast the size of a small cat.

Like a cat, Little Boo likes to curl up on a lap. Unlike a cat he doesn't scratch the arm that cradles him or sink his teeth into it. Dogs know which side their bread is buttered, not to mentioned jammed, and that side is the one with the proprietor on. And right now I am in loco proprietri.

I am only looking after Little Boo for half a day but already he has reminded me that dogs are in every way our moral superiors, exemplars of all the virtues, both traditional and fashionable.

These days we are forever being exhorted to be mindful, by the sort of people who are acutely mindful of the possibility of making a buck out of gullibility and dissatisfaction. Mindfulness, as far as I understand it, and if indeed there is actually anything to understand, involves living in the present, being conscious of our surroundings and taking pleasure in the simple and the ordinary. Which is pretty much the definition of life as lived by a dog.

Little Boo lives only and ever in the present tense. When, as now, there is nothing going on, he sleeps, or at least tries to if only his current guardian would stop typing.

But if, as happened ten minutes ago, the current guardian gets up from his desk, this tiny comical scrap of dog flesh, this runtlet, will dash to the glass door that leads from the study to the garage and from there to the garden and he will jump up and down with the excitement, and dance in a circle on his ridiculous little legs, and he will display, un-self-consciously, more overt delight, more infectious unabashed glee, than the average adult human being manages in a month, no, a year. You cannot not smile.

My garden, though nothing special, is Christchurch Botanic to Little Boo, is Kew, is the Hanging Ones of Babylon, is, in short, the best of all possible gardens because it is the one he happens to be in here and now. He loves the surface of the world more than Attenborough D. brackets Sir brackets, and the bit he likes best right now is under his nose.

He does not envy other dogs better gardens, because what he hasn't got isn't there to be envied. What he has he has and while he does not count his blessings, he revels in them in a way that most of us stopped doing when we reached the age of maybe seven and the dawn of self-consciousness.

Little Boo is more mindful than the most omming of Buddhist monks. He's head-of-monastery material, top of the class in Selflessness. He owns nothing. He has no plans for tomorrow. He lives on faith and charity.
He knows no prejudice. He judges others by their actions. He gives no thought to his own appearance. He doesn't sulk, feel sorry for himself or pretend. If he looks pleased to see you it's because he's pleased to see you. He cannot lie. He's heart whole. He's a dog.

I have missed heart-wholeness for two years now. And though Little Boo is not my sort of dog he reminds me of the dogs I've had and he sets me wondering whether perhaps I should… but, even as I wonder, up pops, complete with side-whiskers, Kipling.

Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

I've given mine five times, first to the family dog when I was little, and then in adulthood to four dogs of my own. I don't think I have it in me to give it again. Oh but I should, I should.