I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
I have never found in a human being loyalty that is comparable to a dog's loyalty.
For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say, I have loved as truly and have lived as decently as my dog, and yet we call them only brutes.
First and foremost I am a commercial writer, and I hope to entertain people. But having said that, I'm in love with the relationship between humans and dogs, and the more I learned about what our military working dogs are doing, I wanted to at least share with people what an important role these animals have in all our lives.
None of the kids in the neighborhood had dogs. My dad walked in that Labrador, and we started running together and rolling around together like we found each other after years apart. And then, suddenly, some of the other people in the neighborhood started getting dogs, too.
One time, I was given an essay topic: to describe a perfect horse, whom the mere sight of the rider's whip would make obedient. I depicted this perfect horse throwing his rider at the sight of the whip.
You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.
whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to man, not to other dogs.
There is no faith which has never yet been broken, except that of a truly faithful dog
I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.
I like animals because they are not consciously cruel and don't betray each other.
I have had strange animals as pets all my life. I was shy growing up, and shy people tend to interact better with animals than people. Animals are direct, not duplicitous.
Dogs like everyone. Cats choose who to like.
[A cat] will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society.
If you call a cat, he may not come. Which doesn't happen with dogs. They're different types of animals. Cats are very sexy I think too in the way they move.
I not only wanted to write when I was 7 and 8, but I sent stuff out when I was 7 and 8. I sent it out... and I couldn't believe that they would turn down my poems about faithful dogs.
No favor can win gratitude from a cat.
I have to have animals. They really make life worth living, and my world actually revolves around them. They know exactly when it's time to get up, exactly when they're supposed to get their food, and they let you know. Mine are right there in my face, first thing every morning.
Man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master.
I give my roosters the best of food. I give them the best of care. I give them everything they want before I ask them to sacrifice. Get a rooster comfortable, and he'll fight his ass off. That's all I ask of HBO. They just can't see that.
I can still see my first dog. For six years he met me at the same place after school and convoyed me home - a service he thought up himself. A boy doesn't forget that sort of association.
Socially inferior animals are the ones that make the most strenuous, resourceful efforts to get to know their keepers. They prove to be the ones most faithful to them…it is a fact commonly known in the trade.
A border collie saved me once when I was pinned under a horse in Colorado. And once when I went through the ice, one of my sled dogs saw me go under, and she got the rest of the team, and they pulled me out of 12 feet of water. I think that dogs offer the only form of unconditional love that's available to humans.
Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection!
