Canine Behaviour

People are often very abrupt with their dogs, ordering the poor things to “Sit!”, “Stay”, "Roll over!", and so on. Their tone of voice is so imperious, and there’s never any “Please” or "Thank you". It’s little wonder, therefore, that many dogs turn out to be vicious and anti-social. If humans were treated in the same way, I’m sure that they, too, would start to acquire a few of the less endearing canine indiosyncrasies.

This morning, just to test my theory, I went up to a random man in the street and said, “Heel!”. Fuck knows what people expect their dogs to do when they say this to them, because, according to my dictionary, it refers simply to the bit on the bottom of your shoe, or else it’s a verb meaning to tilt to one side. Anyway, he didn’t tilt to one side so, à la Barbara Woodhouse's advice, I hit him over the nose with a rolled up newspaper, causing him to whimper a little.

Next, I threw a stick over to the other side of the road and commanded, “Fetch!” At first, he proved a little reluctant, so I threatened him with The Daily Telegraph once more. Eventually, he got the message and retrieved my stick, wiggling his little rear end and panting as he did so. Having achieved success here, I held up a milk chocolate button and said, “Beg!” He instantly dropped to his knees and held his hands in the air, whereupon I released the sweet, which he proceeded to gobble up.

At this point I decided to leave him to his own devices. No sooner had I left than, as I expected, he immediately pounced on a three year old child and bit its head off. Then he went up to a lamp post, cocked one leg, and pissed against it. Finally, he approached a bus queue, jumped on top of one of the waiting women, and started shagging her in broad daylight. All this because I’d spoken to him as one does a dog.

Henceforth, therefore, dog owners should bear this in mind and be more polite to their pets. They might be surprised at the results. Who knows? Courteous requests - for instance, “Fido, would you please conceive a Unified Field Theory, there's a good boy” or “Tyson, old fellow, I would be very grateful if you could just take two minutes off from humping my leg in order to wipe out world poverty and solve the Middle East crisis, you clever fellow” - might work wonders, and transform the lot of humanity.