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Guest Editor BARBARA TRAPIDO introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of dogs IT'S possible that the honour of judging the dog entries has fallen to me because Debbie Taylor, Mslexia’s Editor, came to interview me shortly after I had become a Born Again Dog Person, with the arrival of Polly the brindled lurcher, who promptly stole Debbie’s chocolate croissant (though this wasn’t held against me). Or perhaps it’s because my novels are full of the mess and muddle of family life, and there is nothing like a dog for sabotaging one’s aspiration to elegance, one’s longing for white linen loose covers and an antique damask bedspread. A dog will come along with bin-raiding tendencies and a penchant for rolling in dead seagull wings. It will cause subjects such as Once-a-Month Wormers to enter one’s meal-time conversation. After several decades of doglessness, I’d forgotten the pleasure of co-existence with these closely-bonded creatures; their spontaneity, their playfulness, their constant upbeat expectation of another blue day. I believe in proper pets like cats and dogs, that get something back from their interactions with us; not like those miserable cop-out creatures imprisoned in cages and glass boxes. Anything in a cage just brings me out in goose-bumps. So get those parrots and axolotls back to their habitats. I believe that for children to grow up with a dog will help to counter the kind of horrible me-me species bigotry that allows us to tolerate abuses like industrial farming, while being sentimental about teddy bears and Tamagotchi. For the complete essay, and for Barbara's full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of dogs, read issue 25 • Subscribe! |
 Read a short story chosen by Barbara Trapido: Neela's lucky Penny by Shubha Venugopal  |
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For more on BARBARA TRAPIDO, go to www.contemporarywriters.com |
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