Hemingway

During a walk on a hilly plain nearby, my dad turned to me and mentioned that Hemingway had once said, "Never confuse movement with action" - and asked me what I thought. As a pug, all movement is always some sort of action so all I could do was give him a quizzical look (and I am good at doing puzzled expressions). He nodded and said that I was right - the advice did not make sense as every movement indeed requires action of some kind - so to not call movement an action can only be because you disagree with moving in the first place. It is like saying a blue car is not a car just because you do not like the colour blue. So I suggested that perhaps Hemingway meant to say, "Never confuse every movement with a good action" - at which point my dad just nodded quietly in agreement and we went on walking.

Sometimes I think I would like to try living a wild life like Hemingway, running around with the bulls in Pamplona and all that. My dad once read The Old Man and the Sea to me and I felt I could also be a fisherman, alone in an existential, unforgiving ocean. Then I remembered that I am just a pug and probably can never pilot a boat or cast a net or anything like that. But I have one thing in common with Hemingway - I also write while standing on my feet - or rather I dictate my thoughts and my dad writes them down for me. Sometimes I do not even need to say anything as I am very close to my dad and he understands me perfectly.

Hemingway was an unusual man, but he probably did not look too different from other men or from his ancestors. However, as a pug, I look very different from the grey wolf from which I had evolved. Or rather I had been bred to look the way I do by generations of capricious humans in the distant past - apparently they originally started breeding pugs in China. I am sometimes perplexed by this - for example,  as a brachycephalic breed (ie. with a very flat snout), I cannot swim properly and will probably drown quite quickly if dropped in fast water. There are many wild streams and rivers where we live and my parents always look after me carefully when crossing rickety bridges on walks.  And I mean the waters in the region can be very wild sometimes, especially after some rain.

Obviously, my short legs, very flat face and small teeth also would not help me catch anything in the woods. It is a tough issue. I would like to hunt for my own food but the way we have been bred means that we are totally unable to survive on our own - so you will never see feral pugs or poodles or chihuahuas. It is just weird how people can care so much about preserving endangered animals in the wild while at the same time creating new breeds of dogs (and other pets) which are completely unable to survive on their own. Every pug and many of my dog friends are all endangered species - we are created to need people to survive, and the only environments where we can live are the homes of people. This may or may not be crazy - but at many levels, it does not really make a lot of sense.

Recently a little family of French bulldogs were sadly stolen from a house in Essex, England - it is very probable that they will be forced to breed more French bulldogs or get quickly sold to new owners, if they are lucky. That is the other insane thing - people love brachycephalic dogs so much that they are also worth a lot of money . So there is a lot of thefts and illegal breeding of such dogs (and other fancy dogs as well)- even though we do not have any inherent use apart from sitting around at home.

So it seems that my only purpose in life is to look cute for humans. Well, I suppose it could be worse - but it is not really what a dog's life should be about. Anyway, here is another picture of me looking cute recently.


Pof the Pug


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