You know how sometimes you think you’ve had a brilliant idea, then it bites you in the bum like an athletic but mean jack russell? Suggesting I could “live like a dog for a day to see if they’re happier” turned out to be one of those.
It seemed so promising. When I heard the title of the philosopher Mark Rowlands’ book The Happiness of Dogs: Why the Unexamined Life Is Most Worth Living, it struck me like a Frisbee to the head. Rowlands hasn’t written a how-to guide – rather it’s a lovely meditation on what it’s like in our canine companions’ heads – but it filled me with urgent longing.
Anyone who has sat at a desk while something furry lies oblivious in their eye line, maybe languorously licking its genitals, or more probably asleep, has had a version of the thought at the heart of Rowlands’ book: surely these creatures are happier than us? Dogs, Rowlands says, are “resplendent in their lack of self-examination”; reliably able to access “unbridled happiness”. Dogs have never........