As usual, I was eating breakfast when Desmond went through his morning routine of nuzzling into my coat pocket for tissues.
I told him to stop being a nuisance and go and find his latest surviving squeaky toy.
He circled the table and came back empty-mouthed, so I pointed my finger at what was left of his soft toy lying chewed and armless in a corner.
He scooted off and returned with the toy in his mouth and lay at my feet for a vigorous early morning gnaw.
Now there are two things of interest here.
Firstly, Desmond is a Jack Russell terrier and can’t speak English, although he does sound a bit Welsh while eating his tea.
Secondly, every other dog I have owned looks at your finger when you point at something.
Desmond looks at the object the finger is pointing at.
I have had many interesting conversations with dogs over the years, but they can be a bit one-sided.
They tend to go something like this:
Me: What do you think of Wittgenstein’s theory that the limits of my language are the limits of my world?
Dog: What about more bones?
Me: Okay — but what about pain, or the sound of a bell, or the different shades of blue from aquamarine to teal? How would you describe those?
Dog: More bones are important.
Me: That’s all very well, but Heidegger argues that where there is no language, there is no understanding of being.
Dog: More bones definitely.
And so on.
Most dogs can’t reason because their fixations are elsewhere.
However, Desmond is able to recognise and make a connection between the words “toy” and “over there”, so that gives me hope I may actually be able to one day have a discussion with him about other deeper concepts like why we ignore the reality of our world in favour of baubles and soft toys.
So I’m starting with choices between a soft toy and a new bone.
His choice might give me an indication of which way his world view leans — left or right.
Then we might move on to more complicated discussions about the animal kingdom and our relative positions in that world.
Eventually, I’d like to read Homer’s Odyssey to him (the highly woke Emily Wilson translation of course), and finally, I think we should listen to an audio version of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time together on the verandah, while we look out towards the trees and mark the passage of birds and other potentially dangerous migrants.
Only then will we be able to discuss that central question: Is the world a monoculture or is it actually a many-varied, wild and sparkling thing that defies definition?
And is language up to the job of describing why people and dogs in the western world right now want chewy soft toys instead of more sustaining and protein-rich marrow bones.
Please explain.
John Lewis is a former reporter at The News.
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