A dog’s life is infinitely superior to our own — so let’s embrace it

The Dominican friar Henry Suso was once carving Jesus’s name in his chest with a knife when he noticed a puppy playing nearby. Seeing the little dog amusing itself with a dirty cloth gave the friar an epiphany. Suso realised that redemption is granted not to those who mortify their flesh — for to do so is merely to glorify oneself. Rather, one shows love for God by living in grace, simplicity and sportive celebration of the world. Like dogs.

Those who have seen dogs in action might well demur. Once, in a pub, I was giggling with a friend as the publican’s Welsh spaniel humped the leg of a man at the bar. ‘More drinks?’, my friend asked. As she placed the order, the spaniel transferred his allegiance to her leg. This is what dogs are like: they roll in poo, shed, dribble, fart and perform disgusting sex acts even if you shout at them to stop. We have nothing to learn from them, unless importuning strangers in the most offensive manner possible is admirable. Which it isn’t.

The philosopher Mark Alizart’s delightful little book, though, argues that dogs teach us what we should have taken, but most likely didn’t, from the Stoics, Spinoza and Buddhism — namely that wisdom consists in accommodating ourselves to what life has to offer. It’s a book you might start and finish while your pet is engaged in the equally pleasurable business of sniffing his chums’ bottoms, before the pair of you trot home basking in twin glows of enlightenment.

Dogs get a bad press from philosophers, priests and poets. Montaigne played with his cat and wondered if it was playing with him; it never occurred to him that dogs were similarly superior beings.