Science has so far been unable to tell us how self-aware dogs are, much less whether they have anything like our conscious thoughts. This is not surprising, since neither scientists nor philosophers can agree about what the consciousness of humans consists of, let alone that of animals.

Percy wakes me (fourteen)Percy wakes me and I am not ready.He has slept all night under the covers.Now he__ eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter Where he is not supposed to be. How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you Needed me, To wake me. He thought he would a lecture and deeply His eyes begin to shine.He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.He squirms and squeals: he has done something That he needed And now he hears that it is okay. I scratch his ears. I turn him over And touch him everywhere. He isWild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then He has breakfast, and he is happy.This is a poem about Percy.This is a poem about more than Percy.Think about it.

Progress in evil was quick and easy; Apollyon was not a chap who hid himself and he gave every assistance in his power. The growth in goodness was so slow, at times so flat, so dull, and like the White Queen one had to run so fast to stay where one was, let alone progress; and there were few men who dared to say they had found God. It was easy to be a clever sinner, for the race to an earthly visible goal was short to run, so impossibly hard to be a wise saint, with the goal set at so vast a distance from this world and clouded with such uncertainty.

Be very careful when you judge another human being. Do not measure anybody strictly based on the bad you see in them and ignore all the good. Be wary of any man who intentionally ignores another man's record of deeds or work history simply to impose their own agenda. Such a man's judgment lacks merit and should be disregarded immediately. Without a conscience, there is no truth in them.

... but as with so may diagnoses it is, in the end, the symptoms that matter, not the cause, because this is what being alive means, this is what being a person means, to be sickened by an illness known as you.

Fate," Bizzy said, "adjusts quicker 'n a hungery dog can lick a dish.