Am I allowed to have a dog?

Maeterlinck, in an admirable page, wonders with whom man would find, here below, a little love if he did not have the dog.

Plants are impassive for us; wild beasts flee from us; as for domestic animals, they only show us distrust or hostility which, let's admit it, should hardly surprise us, if we recognize how we repay them for their submission. The cat, which we are willing to admit to us without crushing it with burdens or cutting it into slices, undoubtedly honors us with a sort of cordial understanding. But only the dog loves us.

Throughout time, since Homer singing of the fidelity of Ulysses' old dog, poets and thinkers have been surprised and delighted by this mark of clemency given by destiny to the solitary man in the harsh universe. Let's think about it and learn how to discover the philosophical depth of the somewhat strange litanies that some of these ladies utter while cajoling: The little citizens to their mother..."

“If the horse is man's noblest conquest, the dog is the best.
And yet who, now, can afford to have a dog? What kind of harassment, vexation, and persecution is not threatened today by anyone who dares to take on this challenge: to give his affection to a disinterested companion?

Let this daring person resign himself to living in the depths of the countryside. Does he want to take the train with a pet dog? he is at the mercy of a grumpy traveler, sometimes huge, noisy and even smelly, who demands the expulsion of the little animal.

If no passenger protests, a controller with untimely zeal can, as happened to me recently at Angoulême station, appear, remove the dog and throw it panicked into the narrow box of the van where it is half suffocated by the wind and the smoke.

Arrived in town, another matter. No dogs on the tram; by bus: no dogs; in the metro: no dogs. Ah! He doesn't fare well if he doesn't have enough money to pay for a taxi. Arrived at the hotel no dogs. If he appears before a concierge no dogs

To tell the truth, we hardly understand how, in a country where public opinion has demonstrated a love of animals strong enough to put an end to the cruel and useless experiments of Courtine, those who find pleasure in adopting and to pamper a dog immediately become victims of general animosity. And let no one believe that their misadventures stop when they leave the capital. They are pursued all the way to the ocean.

The Shipping Companies themselves are the most relentless. One of our friends told me last year that, returning from Indo-China, she had to, when embarking, part with a superb collie forever because we didn't want dogs on board. . Others, very recently, were, coming from Morocco, on a liner where they were alone in so-called luxury cabins costing an exorbitant price, forced to deliver a fox and a loulou to the butcher on board, throughout the crossing. . Arriving in Bordeaux, the dogs, poorly fed and poorly cared for, fell ill with pneumonia and enteritis; cost: veterinarian visits, drug purchases, adding to the hundred francs ticket for each of the little animals... and three days late.

No dogs. Don't you think this chorus is becoming obsessive? No dogs? So let's send them back to Courtine.

RAYMOND LULLE.