Tove Jansson. Honest deception (№ 438304)

And my dog is big, beautiful, obedient. He does not love me. We just respect each other. I respect his secret life, I respect the mystery that is characteristic of large dogs that have retained a particle of natural wildness and rebelliousness, but I have no confidence in them. And as soon as some decide to trust the huge guard dogs, they say that, they say, the actions of these animals are downright human, that is, noble and admirable. The dog is dumb and obedient, but having studied us, and understood, and guessed our misery, we should be horrified, alarmed, dumbfounded in the face of the incredible - because our dogs do not go anywhere and remain obedient. Maybe they despise us. Maybe they forgive. Or maybe they are glad that there is no demand from them. We will never know. Maybe they see us as some kind of unfortunate tribe of hunchbacked, lopsided freaks, huge clumsy insects. Not gods at all. Dogs have clearly figured us out and comprehended our nature to the subtlety - only millennia of humility keep them in check. Why is no man afraid of his dog? How long can a wild beast subdue his savagery? People idealize dogs and, at the same time, condescendingly “tolerate” their natural actions - how they bite fleas, bury a rotten bone, wallow in the mud, bark at some tree all night long ... But what do people themselves do - secretly bury any rotten, dig up they hide him again, and they tear his throat under the trees, and they wallow in what ... No. Me and my dog despise them. We took refuge in our special secret life, buried ourselves in the innermost wildness ...