September 28, 2019

MY DOG …

lies in front of me curled up before the fire, as so many dogs must have lain before so many fires. I sit on one side of that hearth, as so many men must have sat by so many hearths.

Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him.

Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were.

You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection.

But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.”

- G. K. Chesterton, taken from his “On Keeping a Dog,”  originally written as a newspaper essay in 1909, later reprinted in Lunacy and Letters (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958).

WOOF!