Judgement Day

Henry was a dog of exceptional dignity. This is important context for everything that follows.

There is a look — and if you have owned a dog, you know exactly the one I mean — deployed at the precise moment they realise you have caught them mid-business. It is not shame. It is not embarrassment. It is something far more carefully considered: the expression of a creature who has weighed your presence, found it wanting, and decided that whatever is happening here reflects rather badly on you.

Henry had this mastered. The slow rotation of the head. The studied pause before full eye contact. The gaze itself, which communicated — with remarkable precision — that you were, at this particular moment, the problem.

The dynamic became considerably more complicated once I started bagging the evidence.

I have often wondered what Henry made of that ritual. The deliberate bending down. The bag. The formal, almost ceremonial quality of the whole arrangement. I suspect he filed it away and waited.

I think this comic is what he had in mind, should the tables ever turn. Dedicated to my awesome pooch. Love you boy.