"What I want," said the elderly lady to the dog-pound officer, "is an animal which will be affectionate to me and will protect my home.""Well, we have this fellow here," he said, pointing to an agreeable little dog in a cage. "A hern spaniel. Herns are famous for their friendly ways."
He opened the cage, and the hern wriggled out, rubbing himself against the lady's legs. When she bent down to stroke him, he stood up on his hind legs and licked her from ear to ear.
"Why, he's adorable!" The dog continued to lick her face.
"And his personal habits are irreproachable. His tongue hasn't been licking anywhere you'd rather it had not."
A small look of alarm registered on the lady's face. "Ah yes, I hadn't been thinking on those lines. I'll take him."
"Hmmm. There's a problem. He's like this with everyone. The only threat he is to burglars is that he might drown them with his saliva. Unlike this one, who I think would bite their ankles in two. A harney bull-mastiff."
The lady studied the beast in silence. "Rather, ah, round."
"And not very affectionate. But undemonstratively loyal."
The harney bull-mastiff gazed the lady up and down, made a face, woofed sourly and waddled back into her cage.
"I was hoping for something that will show me some love. What's this?" she asked, pointing at a red-coated animal with a mad glare.
"A four-courts wigged setter." The handler let the beast out of its cage. It ran around the room barking non-stop, cocked its leg on half a dozen different items, clambered on a desk, where it poised, as if waiting for a photograph, before being shooed back into its cage.
"I don't think so," said the lady quite decisively. "Ahhhh, look! Why is this poor creature looking so sad?"
"It's a mourning noonanite hound. Very steady, reliable honest dogs, but they always seem to be grief-stricken because they haven't got much hair."
"Nor has this one. What is it?"
"Ah that. A Sandymount bald-as-a-coothound. A nice enough dog, but never enormously popular. When you sit down in the evening, it'll probably lecture you but it'll never lick your face."
The lady stopped beside a cage with extra-thick bars. Its inhabitant looked up from the large, almost-human femur it was chewing and snarled at her. "Goodness gracious!" she cried. "What's this?"
"A ferris pitbull. Until recently, entirely feral. Still might be. Sometimes, we think it escapes at night and returns to some of its old habits."
"Can you recommend any of them, unreservedly?"
He looked at her sadly. "Ah, no. These are mere dogs, madam. Not humans."