My dog is vicious to the uninvited guest, lavishly affectionate to the invited one, and so freakishly acute that he has mastered the English language.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
I can't speak American dog very well. There was a lot of improvisation with Uggie - like when I put the dog on the table or sometimes I follow him, sometimes he follows me. I had a lot of treats in my pocket. We worked with Omar Von Muller, the dog trainer. It was very easy because it was a big movie.
When a man tries to communicate with an animal, there's a relationship between them, and you generally find this between the dog and his master.
Dogs who live in each other's company are calm and pragmatic, never showing the desperate need to make known their needs and feelings or to communicate their observations, as some hysterical dogs who know only the company of our species are likely to do.
Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.
My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.
I've made a dog's breakfast of English history, geography, 'King Lear,' and the English language in general.
If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.
People have been warning us that language was going to the dogs ever since Latin started turning into French. Yet the dogs in question never seem to emerge yelping on the horizon.
My dog's a gentleman.