There’s been trouble at the guest house: Two dogs, one bitch. And she’s on heat. One of the males is the more regular partner, the other has been coming in, sniffing around, chasing her. Unsurprisingly, the established male is none too happy about it. So these two dogs have been having a showdown. There is growling, snapping, barking and every now and again a ferocious scuffle. So far at least, the resident male has seen off the intruder.
The bitch, meanwhile, is unperturbed by the whole thing. I have the feeling that she doesn’t mind which of the two comes out as top dog. She will simply give herself to the victorious male when the whole thing is settled.
Usually, I don’t believe that violence helps anything. Watching these dogs, though, I can’t help thinking that perhaps they have a good way to resolve these competitions over sex. It’s so authentic, so visceral – no tricky mind stuff, no sly seductive manoeuvres. We human males have the same drive in us as these dogs. But our expression is usually limited to a word fight. Then we are not really putting our life on the line, so who knows how serious we are. Words are so amenable to distortion, corruption, in a way that bare-chested wrestling in the mud is not.