THE SANDBAGGER

I don’t have a dog, and am not thinking of getting one, but many folks around here have dogs - the dogs are happy in the mountains - and in my walks I see dogs here and there in the towns, most recently on a walk we took in Ohara over the mountain, where we passed a middle-aged Labrador retriever lying stoneskull bored on the concrete doorstep of his owner’s home, his leash tied to the veranda post.

He watched us walk by coming and going (some action at last!) and each time raised his head to look as we spoke to him - and he listened - his attentive eyes showing no hostility, no threat to bark or lunge, he was an especially intelligent dog, bred to run in wild fields and plunge into waters to retrieve hunted birds softly in his mouth, pleased to help, action and knowledge bred into every cell and sinew of his body, and he just laid there bored to death, getting fat, most probably never retrieved a bird in his life, never did at all what he was bred to do…

Seeing him I was reminded of a born-to-run Irish setter near where we used to live in Kyoto, that spent all his each and every dismal day in a cage not much bigger than he was, barely enough to turn around in, and when we’d walk by he wouldn’t even raise his majestic red head, just roll his eyes up to us as if to say shoot me now, his hunting life and marathon breeding more unfulfilled than a samurai salariman in charge of rubber stamps.

We’d stop and talk to the setter and pet him, but it was painful to kneel there and reach through the bars imagining all that beauty running free. When I saw that Lab retriever tied to the post where he was spending all his waking (and likely sleeping) life, it occurred to me that dog owners should be strictly licensed to own certain breeds of dogs, and be required to use the dogs only in the activities (or suitable equivalents) for which they were bred.

As a corollary it occurred to me that maybe a new breed is advisable, a dog bred solely for lying in cages or tied to the veranda post all day doing nothing whatsoever, that I would name the Sandbagger, a full-fledged canine with no ambition other than eating and repose, his life fulfilled to the utmost by complete inactivity, carefully bred for the cage and any form of strict confinement his lifeless masters could think up: he’d just love it, maybe on rare occasions wag his tail at very low frequency to indicate that he was still alive, which would be about all such owners need in their pet.