Natural instincts

I saw a vizsla the other day on the train being fed pieces of chicken. The dog, like its owner, was fat. It seemed to be enjoying the chicken but it also looked unnerved by all the noise and all the people.

As I watched it, I thought about something I read, not long ago, which suggested that dogs involved in fieldsports have hard and brutal lives. It was published by a group that doesn’t like what we do. The train ran on through flooded fields and passed rough areas of scrub and woodland. I always love watching deer and rabbits out of the train window and it struck me that actually that was where the fat vizsla should have been. Dogs, whether people like it or not, are generally at their happiest when pursuing game.

In the same vein, I saw a video on Instagram recently of a labrador in a park swimming out and picking up a duck. “It’s worried that the baby duck is drowning,” read the earnest caption. The comments section was awash with people saying how cute the whole thing was but I found it quite sad really — a poor dog just wanting to do what it was born to do.