Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way.

I have loved dogs for as long as I can remember. Couldn't have been otherwise, since this is a genetic predisposition, inherited from dog-mad parental units, one of whom has the penchant for kissing any dogs which happen to cross her path and bringing waifs home ever so often.

Unlike cats, dogs aren't narcissists. You won't find a dog wasting time grooming himself. He would rather roll in dead fish, and emerge - like Botticelli's Venus - with a triumphant grin and a distinctly ripe air. I could swear there are dogs which lie awake at night thinking up good deeds to do the next day! They just want to please! Call a dog, and it will run to you helter-skelter, even at the risk of breaking its own neck. Call a cat and what you will get is a look which says "What's in it for me?" I like dogs because, like humans, they understand ladder-like social arrangements. Cats, on the other hand, see themselves as the hub surrounded by spokes of human minions, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot!

I find the first encounters between dogs highly entertaining. These are thrilling and pregnant with possibility. There is a curiosity, tempered by constraint. An atavistic canniness stops them fro going utterly overboard even at the whiff of future friendship. The mutual reluctance to pass each other is amusing to watch.

Shimla's strays have afforded me the opportunity of petting and playing with dogs at a time when I am, thanks to my itinerant habits, unable to keep a pet. They have given me the warm affection of close acquaintance which stops short of a familial relationship. Shorn of any mutual responsibility, our meetings are joyous, but free of expectation. If only these could be replicated with some two-legged creatures I know!