Editorial- It's a dog's life

It's a dog's life By Jack Martin
I have a killer in the family. I’d imagined we’d bought a faithful family pet, a picture of tail-wagging friendliness, sat by the fire, soft wet nose in lap. Instead it has revealed its true colours, red in tooth and claw, as a fully paid-up fowl murderer.

Looking out the bay window this morning, coffee in one hand and feijoa jam on toast in the other, I observed a tragically comic scene. Our pooch chased down a squawking chicken with dynamic lethal ability while elegantly pursued, in a vain attempt to prevent bloody chook murder, by my wife. She was closely followed by our three-year-old son who, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, did both just to make sure.

The lesson: don’t buy a terrier. They were bred for their hunting qualities and at the very first slip of the leash they revert to terrierism. Ours is a “Whoodledor”. For those of you more familiar with Kennel Club pedigrees it’s a Wheaten Terrier crossed with a Poodle crossed with a Labrador... more commonly known as a mongrel.

Dogs started out as quite handy to have about the cave, what with hunting and later on rounding up sheep and cattle, but when was the last time you asked your dog to catch your supper?

Yet dogs are by far and away our most successful domestic pets. They are a good psychological fit. They’re non-judgemental, faithful until death, and the perfect child substitute once yours have flown the nest to spend their best years in the alehouses of London, Sydney and Auckland. Dogs become fully paid-up members of the family.

But what must they think of us? They’re only a couple of evolutionary steps away from their wolf ancestors yet we mollycoddle them, feed, clothe, school them, and spend fortunes on medical care. We run around picking up their turds to be wrapped in plastic and placed ever so carefully in our pockets. It’s quite a contrast to the majority of creatures we’ve come across, that we’ve either hunted to extinction or rounded up to farm and eat.

Then there is their phenomenal genetic elasticity, their ability to morph into whatever shape we strange humans breed into them. Think about the hilarious breeds we’ve created: the European Borzoi, an aristocratic hound with jaws designed for restraining a wolf, handy to have about your back yard; the Giant German Schnauzer, who doesn’t have an especially large nose; and the Xoloitzcuintli, an Aztec hairless greyhound with webbed feet.

I think we’ll stick with the Whoodledor and lock up the chooks.

Jack Martin

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