News, News, News, News receives over 500,000,000 letters per week, all travelling through a large trans-continental cylindrical tube and into our sorting room underneath the Antarctic Peninsula. The letters are sorted through by interns, who swim through the sea of letters wearing Teflon suits to avoid death by paper cut. Our interns are encouraged to post YouTube reels of themselves wading through the letters to draw attention to the fascinating novelty of their job. All profits from the reels go to News, News, News, News.
This week's letter comes from Jasper, a Border Collie dog, from Crawley:
Dear NNNN,
I've been thinking a lot about life recently, and I know people say it's unhealthy to think too much, but I definitely think i'm closer to realising a unified theory of the mechanical processes of the World. As a dog, i'm afforded a great deal of time and space to contemplate these things, too much, some might say. But, as i'm approaching 70 in dog years, i'm starting to realise that as you grow older, though you lose the unbridled virility of youth, you gain a great deal of perspective, and woe betide any dog whom, in their old age, ignores the ripened fruits of intellectual inquiry.
I have a long-established complex when it comes to travelling via car, and it's taken many long, hard looks in the mirror to be able to say that out loud, all the more troubling as I can't stand mirrors, and the dog that lives in them. I remember vividly, as a puppy, being driven with my new humans from the rescue shelter where I lived early on in life, to my new home.
It was the first time i'd been in a car and I had no idea what to expect. I would've been content with walking, but the humans insisted I get into the boot of this large metal box which stank of oil. It's only after years of observing the humans that i've realised the reason they use the car is to avoid walking.
On a very deep level, this is unfathomable to me, the idea that you'd want to circumvent walking in the travelling process. Walking, and smelling the myriad sweet airs of Gossops Green Park in Crawley, are what I live for, it's where I meditate on the aromas of life and try and make sense of our brief time on Earth. But my gripe is not with humans, but with the cars that shackle them to their soulless existence.
I hate the things. Being ensconced in a groaning metal box is my idea of a nightmare, why would anyone forsake walking for this utter nonsense? It took me a long time to make peace with cars, and we had, up until this point, found some common ground. It felt like a huge weight being lifted off my chest when I finally realised the car wasn't trying to usurp my position in the family, or outright slaughter me.
You see, for a long time I believed cars to be monstrous entities that humans had somehow, over many years, been able to tame and utilise for their own pleasure. I've been in cars many times throughout my life, the times they'd take me to see the nice woman who scratches my belly then injects me whilst my humans watch on with care, without ever thinking to intervene, the times they'd go away for a few weeks and take me to these other humans, with strange customs and peculiar smells, who called me different names and expected me to act like a much smaller dog, the times they'd take me to the beach, with the sea air knocking me off my stride and bringing me to a point of spiritual nirvana.
All these experiences, positive or not, were made possible by car journeys. I thought my humans were very courageous to brave this horrendous machine every time they wanted to have a spiritually-nourishing olfactory experience. But it's with great embarrassment and justifiable resentment that I admit how wrong I was. Turns out my old humans were right to chastise me as a "stupid dog", i'm a Collie, for goodness' sake, I should've seen it coming, humans control the vehicles absolutely!
They don't hate cars as dogs do, they like them, they love them! Throughout all these years of trying to find coping mechanisms to deal with car journeys, it seems i've become blinded by my own anxiety. I'd assumed my humans were bricking it just as much as me, but no! They've been lapping it up, enjoying every moment of their walk-free existence. If I were a ruder kind of dog, i'd call them a bunch of utter twits, but my humans do quite a lot for me, and I cannot live without their intoxicating smells.
An underwhelming eureka moment, dear reader, but my resentment shan't simmer for long. My purpose in writing this letter to NNNN is to spread awareness of this deceit to other dogs. Call it a dog whistle, if you find that amusing, but i'm not prepared to see the future of canine-kind forced to brave the tumult of a 4-hour car journey, believing that their humans are equally as terrified of the whole ordeal, when in reality they probably find our discomfort utterly adorable.
You'll probably be wondering how i've been able to carry on after this illusion's been so cruelly shattered. Well, i'd be loathe to lie down on my fluffy tummy and accept my fate like a good dog. No. I'm a Collie, I come from a long line of working dogs who toiled in the fields serving their humans by chasing sheep for some reason. My grandfather could do it in under 3 minutes, his humans even had a plaque made. It was always tough for me to live up to that legacy, I was never destined to be a sheep dog, if anything, I feel sorry for the sheep, also victims of this seemingly endless web of human deceit.
Well, I still travel in the car when needs must, but I've been resisting in my own way. No more will I skulk in the back, whining and giving my humans what they so desperately crave. I'm no nervous Nelly, I'm a proud Collie with the sharpest intellect, excellent recall, and the keenest sense of smell in all the land, I intend, from now on, to stick my head out of the passenger window and taste the sweet air, no matter how fast the car's travelling, or how much it irritates my humans. I've tried it already, good heavens, was it freeing! The way the wind contorted my face brought me back to those glorious times by the sea, I cannot live without it. The humans just looked on and laughed, but they know, they know! I even saw other dogs doing it in solidarity.
Looks like i've started a movement. No more will dogs be forced to endure nightmarish car journeys, utterly enslaved by this ugly metal box the humans seem to rely on so much. It just takes one dog to stick their mad head out the window, then one more, then a dozen, then hundreds, and the world is changed. Let this be a lesson to my humans, whom I love, but find their ways jarring and downright bizarre, you think you've evolved past walking? Think again. Don't deny a dog a W-A-L-K! (Yes, I know what that stands for, how feeble do you think I am?)
Yours sincerely,
Jasper
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