The dogs are on the TV now, snarling and snapping with newsreaders, celebrities, and sports personalities, and growling with children and members of the studio audience. We know it’ s important – it’s on every channel, even the sports and porn – but there’s no clue as to why, because even the signing and subtitles are in dog language. We invite a stray in off the street, to act as an ad hoc interpreter, but the only words he knows of our tongue are Fetch! and Sit! and Stay! and none of these conveys the complexities of the present situation. He licks his balls, then presses his nose against the screen, before turning to us, one by one, as if this look alone could appraise us of the full picture, the grand narrative, and the deeper truth that occupies every canine mind. Who’s a good boy? he asks, as the barking on TV falls silent, and each one of us knows in our sad human hearts, that the wrong response at this juncture would be the last betrayal of fifteen thousand years of trust.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Frank Messa
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