RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29910, 25 August 1962, Page 18

RANDOM REMINDER

THE DIGNITY OF DOG

Animal lovers will say that their particular pets have more of the better attributes of mankind than most of their relatives loyalty, intelligence, sympathy, courage. It is only the fact that animals seldom leave valuable legacies that makes relatives bearable. On the other hand, some interesting legacies are left for animals—money for cats’ homes, paddocks for horses, daily bones for dogs. And in the main, they probably earn them. Owners of cats feel strongly about their animals arid read into that impassive, yellow gaze all sorts of things the outside can not comprehend. Christchurch television programmes give a clue to the hold animals of all sorts have on people; the screen is full of Ferguson Fang, Torchy's rather precious

friends, circus animals, police dogs, Fury, Lassie and the rest. Exeunt all. This story is about a dog whose only resemblance to Lassie is that he looks more like a collie than anything else. But it may show that animats do, indeed, have some of the better characteristics of man—self respect and dignity. This dog, if no monarch of anything save his long-suffering family, is called Glen. He is remarkable only for his appetite, and his complete lack of table manners. He has lived long, and well. He has never suffered from any of the usual dog ailments, nor been subjected to the rather disgusting treatments for them. But not long ago. while about his lawful occasions, he hurt his feet, plural. Never a dog to do things by halves, he hurt all four of them.

So he was taken by his devoted subjects to a veterinarian.

His young master took him into the waiting room. And notwithstanding his poor paws, Glen achieved a dignified entrance. But when they were through the door, they discovered that all round the room there were people, most of them women, all of them crooning over cats. There were cats on mats, cats in baskets, cats on laps. All of them being addressed in nauseating terms. Glen would have none ot it. He stumped straight out again, looking rather like Hornblower at a parish fete, back to the car. And there he insisted on staying, until all the other patients had been treated. Homo sapiens; cams sapientior.