Dogs and more greenfinches

This afternoon was cold and grey and wet: fickle April. The phone rang. It was my mother, asking for help with her two gorgeous galumphing golden retrievers. They had eaten their bed while she was out and needed an emetic to bring said bed out of the top end of their digestive systems rather than the, generally more complex and expensive, bottom end.

I met her at the vets'; we spent a pleasant half-hour in the near-arctic drizzle with two dogs puking bed-stuffing on our toes.

There were greenfinches there too.

We keep two dogs in our home; we love them very much and they are excellent watchdogs; but most important of all they provide a kind of evolutionary perspective which puts us, as humans, in our proper place in relation to the rest of the animal kingdom. This relationship, which man has so frequently and flagrantly abused, is one of the most important elements that needs cultivating in our evolutionary progress towards a higher state of civilization.


Peter Scott
Observations of Wildlife