Dog’s delight in real world at 60kmh

Acar pulled up alongside. Leaning out of the rear window was a dog, a messy young mongrel, all grin and energy. The lights changed. As we pulled away side by side, I watched the dog. The dog watched the road ahead, its tongue out, its ears flapping, its cheeks inflated with wind. And the corners of my mouth curled into a smile. Is there anything so infectiously happy as a dog at a car window?

The authors of the Declaration of Independence could have been writing of dogs. For if you give a dog life and liberty then the next item on its agenda will be the pursuit of happiness. And that includes leaning out of car windows to get to the future first.

It is an act of greedy relish. The dog wants a dose of reality. Instead of the synthetic world of the car interior, the mock leather seating, the plastic dashboard, the conditioned air, it wants the sapid world of life and death, of growth and decay, of hunter and hunted, the world of happenstance the dog evolved to fit. We evolved to fit it too, but we move further away from it every year and grow more and more afraid of it, and do more and more to destroy it. To see the dog relish the actual reminds us how to be happy.

To project its head satisfactorily a dog has to stand on an arm rest that was not designed for a dog to stand on. But such is a dog’s lust for the world that it considers the effort worthwhile.

Standing up, travelling at sixty kilometres an hour and with its front paws balanced on a substrate that offers no grip, a dog is vulnerable. If the driver brakes sharply the dog is thrown into the back of the seat in front and then into the foot well. If the driver brakes fiercely the dog may be decapitated or may itself decapitate the driver. The dog does not know this. Nor if it did would it care. The dog is immersed in the sights and smells that are hurtling deliciously by. What happens is what happens. And of course what happens is that neither dog nor driver is decapitated.

As a kid I caught a train to school. A sign above each window warned us of the dangers of leaning out. We all knew the story of the boy who leant out just as the train went into a tunnel and reeled back into the carriage minus his head. And we all leant out of the window.

As the train pulled up to a platform the sleekness of its flank would be broken as the doors opened like leaves bursting from a branch. At each door was a schoolboy judging his moment. The aim was to be first to set foot on the platform. But you had to do so running. Judge it wrong and your momentum would fling you down and roll you along the asphalt, skinning knees, elbows and pride. But such were the risks of the world and we were as happy as dogs.

These days on that same railway line, the doors are electronically locked until the train has stopped. And how long before it becomes an offence to have a dog unrestrained in the car. Five years? Ten at most.

‘‘Are you aware, sir, of how many drivers have been decapitated by their pets?’’

And thus another little road to happiness will be blocked off in this world and the average man and his average dog will live twelve dull minutes longer. Woo hoo.