In many ways I regret getting my dog
because I've grown annoyingly fond of her and I know that one day the bitch
will break my heart and die. For years I refused to watch animal documentaries
because I didn't like the idea of seeing a shark rip open a seal or a crocodile
pulling the head off a zebra. People say I should man up because it's just part
of life, but fuck them! When I was younger I lived in the kind of area where a
young girl would drop her pants in the park and then casually do a shit under
the slide. Just because something's part of life it doesn't mean I need to
watch Richard Attenborough narrate it on a Sunday night. Around the time she
was doing her public dump, there seemed to be a weird sub-genre of animal abuse
movies that masqueraded as kids films that I didn't like either. They all had
the exact same plot in which a child would befriend an animal that would be
taken away and tormented by the adults before being rescued by the kid at the
end. Free Willy is probably a good example of this with the film-makers
cleverly realising that the simplest way of creating drama in a film for
children is by finding a cute, innocent creature and then fucking it up. Like
those shit movies from my youth, my dog too has found herself in trouble when
I've needed to protect her. Another dog attacked her once and so I had to kick
it in the face... Job’s a good’n. Let's move on.