Diary of a Dog-walker (18 page)

Kudu's contribution to the History of Thought brings to mind Dr Johnson's famous rebuke to Bishop Berkeley, the father of idealism, or immaterialism, who suggested that things only exist in so far as we perceive them – so that the answer to the conundrum ‘If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?' must be no. Johnson's response to this is recorded in Boswell's
Life
: ‘After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it – “I refute it
thus
.” '

In similar fashion Kudu offers a refutation of Socrates, who declared that ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.' Kudu lives just such a life (the fact that it is endlessly examined by me does not count) but it is self-evidently – resplendently, indeed – worth living.

Acknowledgements

In dark moments I have cringed at my own presumption in imagining that people would be interested in me and my dog, and I am grateful to those who have kept faith with a project that might easily have been dismissed as preposterous. Rhidian Wynn-Davies originally championed the column at the
Daily Telegraph
, Vivienne Schuster, my tireless agent, saw the potential for a book, and Susanna Wadeson, my editor at Transworld, showed me – very tactfully – how to shape the material into one.

My writing has often been improved by a loyal team of readers and editors at the kitchen table and in the
Telegraph
newsroom, and most of all I owe gratitude to those who have supplied the stories, the dog-walkers of Battersea and Clapham first among them. Anne Whiteside, who walks Kudu when I am away, deserves special mention for taking such wonderfully good care of him. David Nissan and Gwyneth Williams nurtured him during the first weeks of his life, so this book really could not have been written without them; when their
litter was broken up they kept one of Kudu's sisters, Mielie, for themselves, and we heard with great sadness that she had died of pancreatitis at the tender age of three and a half.

I have quoted widely from the canon of dog literature, and would like to thank the following authors and estates for permission to use their works:
In Search of Fatima
© 2002, Ghada Karmi, Verso Books;
Spies of the Balkans
© 2010, Alan Furst, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group, London;
Man Meets Dog
by Konrad Lorenz ©1983, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, Germany;
Inside of a Dog
© 2009 by Alexandra Horowitz, Simon and Schuster;
Dogs and Their Ancestors
by Mrs Neville Lytton, printed with permission of The Earl of Lytton;
My Dog Tulip
by J. R. Ackerley © 1965, Methuen, London;
The Old Brown Dog
© 1985, Coral Lansbury, The University of Wisconsin Press.

About the Author

Edward Stourton
is the author of five previous books. He is a newspaper columnist, writer and presenter of several high-profile current affairs programmes and documentaries for radio and television, and regularly presents BBC Radio Four programmes such as
The World at One
,
The World this Weekend
,
Sunday
and
Analysis
. He is a frequent contributor to the
Today
programme, where for ten years he was one of the main presenters.

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DIARY OF A DOG-WALKER
A DOUBLEDAY BOOK: 9780857520074
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN: 9781446487631

First published in Great Britain
in 2011 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Edward Stourton 2011

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Daily Telegraph
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