Gail has been reading me extracts from an interesting book this week. It's called 'The Philosopher and the Wolf'. It's written by a man called Mark Rowlands, a philosophy lecturer, who buys a wolf cub and whose life for the next eleven years is dominated by his lupine acquisition. All you dogs out there, take my advice and make sure your humans buy a copy of this book immediately.
Why so?
Well, put simply, this wolf will make you look good. Really really good. Because it will entirely re-calibrate your human's idea of what it means for a pet animal to misbehave.
Well, that is, unless you too did $500 worth of damage to the air conditioning system within ten minutes of entering your new home as a puppy. And in the subsequent few days engaged in "...destruction of all furniture and carpets, with a soiling option also available for the latter..."
Or maybe, like Brenin the wolf, you regularly wake your owner by dropping a dead bird on his face as dawn breaks. Perhaps you also think that 'playing' with a dog involves seizing it by the neck, pinning it to the ground and then shaking it violently back and forth. Or do you like to practice a little feng shui by attempting to drag your favourite armchair out into the garden, and then wrecking it when you find it will not fit through the door frame?
Yes, it seems, the pattern of daily life with a wolf includes all these activities and much more besides.
So, fellow pups, if you have committed some petty crime this week - stolen a piece of cake perhaps, or barked too loudly at the postman - and your human has taken it badly and you feel they need to get things in perspective, then, well, use your computer skills, check out the credit card number and get ordering on Amazon right now....