"I'll be your dog"

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: pets are great. Dogs are especially great since they actually care about you. Old ladies may sit and chuckle to themselves about the bond they have between themselves and 10 year-old Tiddles, but they are sadly deluded. In their dusty mind Tiddles is a warm, affectionate, loving companion who is never happiest than when she is cuddling up to her blue-rinsed owner. The knowledge that, to Tiddles, the tittering heap of knitwear is little more than a slow moving cat-food dispenser, is knowledge that waits at the entrance of her mind but has yet to be allowed in. It’s probably wearing trainers, so entry is anything but likely.

Dogs on the other had, are brilliant. We’ve all seen homeless people on the streets of London or Brighton, wearing grubby rags, clearly surviving on bin-scraps, and with a dog sat nobly beside them. It is fair to say that this is a dog that has a pretty shit life compared to, say, Lassie. Does it care? No. There he sits next to his snoring cider soaked partner, blinking apologetically for the rapidly expanding puddle of piss that passers by are huffily vaulting. “I’m sorry about my friend, he’s had a run of bad luck. He’ll be back on his feet soon enough though, just you wait” he says through watery eyes formed of rich loyal chocolate. A cat would have given him a golden shower, scratched his eyes out and sold them for catnip.

No surprise then that a Bristol Family are so keen for their runaway dog to come home, they’ve been peeing in the street. Not through distress-induced leakage, but through legitimate luring techniques. Techniques learned from a website I might add, so there is no doubting their validity. “It’s quite a normal way of doing it” said the Mum. Of course it is, you lose your dog you spray the drive with your first leak of the day. It’s obvious. “You just put a little bit in a bottle and then top it up with water” she goes on, confusing the contents of her bladder with the contents of a Kia-Ora bottle.

“You only have to do it once.”

Ok, maybe it’s not so bad.

“We've left two trails.”

Oh. Maths not as good as her research skills then.