There are many people who believe they know what is in the mind of a dog, it is, in fact, a multi-billion industry in books and chain pet stores. I am not one of those people.

Dogs are not us, and they are not like us, they are citizens of another nation, we share the world with them and have  become closer to them than any other animal ever has in the history of mankind.

When I see Bud rush to protect Red and stand down animals fifty times his size I often wonder what is happening.

I keep thinking of this passage, from my favorite dog book, “Call Of The Wild,” by Jack London. Bud is a small dog, quite different from the famous Buck, the hero of that story. Like Buck, Bud was lost and then found.

The point is, a small dog can have a big heart, and all dogs come from the same place, no matter their size. Bud is a story of rebirth, of the ancient song that is the song of dogs.

“And not only did he learn by experience,” wrote London of Buck, in Call Of The Wild, “but instincts long dead came alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. …Thus, as token of what a puppet thing is the ancient song surged through him and he came into his own again…”