Waldemar Meets The World's Biggest Dog And Journeys Into Canine History | Puppy Love | Perspective

Hello, this is Valdemar Januszczak, art critic, producer and presenter of documentaries. Thanks for watching Perspective, YouTube's home for classical art. I'm just pretending. I wouldn't do that. But he probably would, and we're remarkably happy to let him. Every day, whether it wants it or not, Britain gets a good soaking of dog piss. A million gallons a day, they reckon. That's half a billion gallons a year. It's a huge quantity of urine. Shakespeare called Britain his sceptered isle. But when I look out of my window in the morning, what I see is an increasingly septic one. The question is, why? Not, why do eight million or so British pooches need to pee and poo all over this country? That's unpleasantly obvious. But why do we need them so much that we let them? The shih tzu makes a very alert watchdog. The hair above its nose should be tied up with a ribbon so it can see clearly. The origins of the chihuahua are shrouded in mystery. It's said that chihuahuas with blue coats were sacred to the Aztecs. But those with red coats were ritually sacrificed on Aztec funeral pyres. Shopping for dogs isn't easy. There are just so many varieties to choose from. Do you go white and fluffy, or blue-eyed and strange? The Jar Jar Gabor look, or the Paul Newman? I like this one, the Anne Widdicombe. Whatever you want from a dog, there'll be one for you. This doggy shop-ability is a new thing. They may be our oldest animal friends, our very first domestics, but for the many millennia that we've been together, the relationship between us and them has been an eminently practical one. We've used them for hunting, for guarding our homes, for herding our sheep, and, of course, for warfare. No other breed in the dog world looks quite like a Shar Pei. In its native China, the Shar Pei used to be a ferocious fighting dog. Its seemingly oversized skin makes it a difficult dog to get to grips with. You should main shock her. Yes, we should bring him in on a very short lead. I don't have a camera left. Can we... can we bring him in? Yes. Come here. I mean, you know, obviously, you should beat Harry. Come here, come here. Shall I take him? I think you'll have to. Go on to Dad. All right, I've got him. He's got... Do the eyes... I mean, can they not see very well? I mean, the eyes do look ever so small. He's got deep eyes. All this stuff here is like, no. Is he breathing? Well, we're hoping for a blue bitch puppy. I mean, Shocker's blue, our dog, but also his muzzle is blue. The bottoms of his feet are blue. He's completely blue. You know, whereas dogs have got... normally got black pads and black muzzles, etc, he's blue, his tongue is blue and everything, you know. I must admit, when I had my first one, I was just, you know, very glad to have a Shar-Pei, but then you sort of look at it, and because of the sort of person I am, I sort of thought, I wonder what I could produce out of that. Angela and Pete are skilled and careful dog breeders. Like many of their colleagues, they live spiritually and geographically in the English Midlands, where splashes of colour are in demand. With a new litter of rare Shar-Peis on the way, they've put an ad in Dogs Today. I answered it. And all of us wait to see what Shocker's mum has come up with. They're the first blue bitches born in the country. We're hoping, you know, because the mother's imported, we imported her from Arizona, and she is from the Blue Line, and last time she produced a blue dog, which we've still got. So we were hopeful to get a blue bitch, but not three. Angie lives and breathes the dogs, you know, that's her life. She'll put them to the mother, what, every two hours, Angie? Every two hours, I fix them to the mum every two hours to make sure they all feed. Also, they can't go to the toilet themselves. At the moment, you have to stimulate them, they'll just explode, literally. Yes, we're sleeping in here. Well, we've been sleeping in here for a week, waiting for her to put this. I wish Angela was my mum. The warmth and care and attention she devotes to her little blue fighting dogs is spectacularly unmissable. I know of many commentators from a variety of countries that have all come to the same conclusion, that in Britain, dogs are almost a conduit for repressed emotions. It is the cliche about the British having a stiff upper lip, and they are a more emotionally repressed country. They, in fact, touch each one another less than other countries. They stand further apart when they converse. And so it isn't surprising that perhaps dogs, like main-time soap operas, provide a conduit for the British to express emotions which they're not allowed to. This is Harry. Isn't that right? Yes. See, they're absolutely delightful. He loves mummy. Hello, darling. Hello, sweetheart. Harry! He's a good girl. Oh, yes. They're not the brightest of God's creatures, are they? I mean, but... You know, it's... They just are. They be. And that is enough. In fact, if more of us be instead of want and all have be material, we'd all be a lot happier. People say to us that we like our pets more than we like people. That's their criticism. But I had a row with a man over here this summer about that. You obviously think more of your dogs than you do of people. And I said, yes. And meeting people like you just reinforces my belief. How sober. Exactly right. I need help. The mind of the British dog worshipper is a dark and worrying mystery to me. So I've decided to seek guidance from the famous agony aunt of dogs today. Madam Dogs, as she calls herself in print, was originally Italian and grandly christened Caterina di Imperiali di Francavilla. But that's not how you and I know her. Katie Boyle. Hello. Say hello. Hello. Say hello. Hello. Well, they know what I'm here for. How are you? How nice to see you. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm delighted. I remember you on the Eurovision Song Contest with Cliff Richard. Congratulations. Yes, and with Abba, too. And you've reinvented yourself since, though, very successfully. Well, I see that. You're now Mrs Dogs. Mrs Dogs, that I am, Madam Dogs. Of course it is. How well you recognize it. I'm delighted. Thank you so much for agreeing to see me. Come on, dogs. Come on. Kiss. Come on. Daisy. Let's say she's done what all dogs seem to do, which is run around and lick other dogs' urine and smell their bottoms. I'll tell you one thing. And they come and kiss you. Isn't that disgusting? No, absolutely not. But the great thing is that these dogs always are looked after at night. I always wipe over their faces and down below quite happily and no problems that are routine. Why do you have dogs? Why do I have dogs? Because I enjoy them. It is not a question of child replacement. Not a bit. I have lots of children. I have masses of godchildren. Hang on, hang on. How can you be so sure about that? Because I never wanted children. I never wanted children. I had a very bad miscarriage, and I hate to say it, but I really was rather pleased when I had the miscarriage because I didn't want it. I am very much aware of my own defect in my makeup, and therefore I know that I wouldn't have the patience to have a child saying to me, Why? What? Where? How? Being a child. I couldn't take it. But equally, I can train my dog not to be a bastard nuisance, either to myself or to my family or to other people. You like the fact that you can control them, don't you? Yes, but this is important because you should be able to control your child too. You should be able to. Why are so many terrible things happening in the world today? Because parents are frightened of the word discipline. They're frightened to say no. I'm not afraid of saying no to my dog because I know it'll benefit the dog and it'll benefit me. And I think if parents had that kind of attitude to children, it would help a great deal for the generations to come. It isn't surprising that dog owners like a sense of control and obedience, and what they can't get out of their own children or certainly out of other people's children is utter obedience and utter control and the idea that you actually can deprive dogs of food and of love and warmth for temporary periods of time without the authorities coming down on you in the way that the social services may if you have a child. And so it does afford them the ability to live out a controlled relationship of domination with subservience and obedience, the payoff. Few things the British have invented appear quite as incorrigibly eccentric as the dog show. Dog breeding calls itself a sport and these are its Birmingham championships. But beneath the sweet and even amusing surfaces, something rather sinister is going on. Animals are being genetically modified, carefully selected, deliberately inbred. If the Nazis were doing this to people, we'd be calling it eugenics. But when the British do it to their dogs, it's just a bit of fun and out come the marquees. You've got to have your head up and you've got to look attractive. The judge will stand back and see the outline. You can see the shape of the dog from there. Well, this is a short-faced breed, you see, so in this heat they will be. Their tongues will hang out a bit, puff a bit, but nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about. If you care about animals, then the last thing you do is breed them. I mean, your average dog couldn't care less whether he wins a cup or not, but the person who owns that dog does matter. The British have adopted the bulldog as their national breed. It was originally bred for competitive dog-fighting and bull-baiting. But today's gentle dog has been constructed solely for the show ring, which has caused a number of health problems. I spoke to a lady this morning whose grandfather was top breeder of bulldogs and, as she said, she can always remember there being problems, especially with the bulldogs giving birth. And now every bulldog bitch will have to have its puppies delivered by caesarean, as the head is always too big for the bitch to give birth naturally. The breathing, that's evident. You can see it's permanently got its mouth open and its nose is so shallow and short now that it does have problems. It looks uncomfortable, and I believe it is uncomfortable. They've become incorporated into this kind of, you know, British bulldog. So if it sits there in a corner puffing and panting away, looking like Winston Churchill, that seems to be... They're quite happy with that. Join me in hoping that all these former champions of bull-torturing and man-hunting, the ex-rat killers and one-time fighters to the death who roam our parks, never remember their origins. Modern dogs have some very unsavoury pasts. These days, I think even I could outrun a bulldog with a memory. But please, angry British dog lovers, don't throw me in there with one of those. Until the 17th century, mastiffs were used as dogs of war, and English mastiffs fought the French at Agincourt. According to the Guinness Book of Records, an English mastiff is currently the biggest dog in the world. Name? Kale. Come on. How big is she? She's 20 stone 7 pound. Nearly 21 stone. She's got... All her teeth are there. They're quite big, large teeth, so they are. They're in great condition, so they are. We'll probably mount a vet, same as the other side. Let's even get a shot of her jaws. She's got quite large droopy jaws, but her teeth are in first-class condition. Basically, they have big teeth like that. That's for crushing their bones and stuff. It does get you a lot of attention, yeah. If you take it down through the village and stuff, you take it down the main street, it does get you a lot of attention. People have seen some clippings in the newspaper and stuff, and they instantly recognise you. Walking the dog, it just brings instant attraction to you. When you have it in the car and stuff, this is just some newspaper clippings and stuff. There's loads of different ones there. This is one of the daily papers, basically just saying about Kel, how big she was, how much she eats. The reaction from some of the breeders, yes, some are very happy for us. As I said, Oprah's weight is obese. The dog should never be like this. It's unhealthy. It's a fat dog. It's going to die young. You get all the various comments like this, but these are from people who have never met us, and they've never met the dog as well. So it's all just hearsay, and I think it comes down to jealousy, so it does, from the breeders and that, and they've been trying to breed dogs with world record titles, and basically I've never been trying to feed this dog up for a world record title. This dog's just a natural giant. It's what it is. It's done this of its own accord. Well, there only is one in the world, so if you can put a figure on it, you tell me. Some have said 20,000. Some have said 50,000. Some have said you can't put a price on it because it's another biggest dog in the world. Something happened to this dog. Could you get another one? You couldn't get another one? Six eggs. British dogs consume around 820,000 tonnes of doggy goodies every year, which works out at around 50p per dog per day. I phoned up Save the Children. They estimate that 50p a day in Angola would feed a family of three. Turn the nose up on her. She knows it's just cheap stuff, you know. Now, you know what we're going to do today? He's going to be neutered. He's going to be castrated. Right. And this is just to stop him wanting to escape and play with other dogs. That's right. Get excited. Get excited, yeah. There you go. OK, you don't look very sleepy. Good boy. OK. You OK like that? Yeah. Good man. Good boy. Go to sleep. I love the language of dogs. It's so determinedly euphemistic. When we kill them, we say we're putting them to sleep. When we cut off their bollocks, we say we're having them done, which sounds quite sweet, really. How good we've got at not facing up to what we actually do to the poor beasts at our mercy. Beautiful. That's the area we're interested in. On the outer edges of Lower London, where life is grim and prospects are low, dogs trade in their testicles for survival. The Celia Hammond Clinic has performed more castrations and hysterectomies than anywhere else in Britain. Neutering dogs for their own good is Celia Hammond's unlikely calling. When you walk in, there's a very powerful, almost messianic air here. Clearly, you believe that neutering is very important. Go through the reasons for me. Well, I mean, obviously, the overriding reason is pet population control. I mean, we believe that if enough animals are neutered, then people will value the reduced number and look after them properly. But there are also enormous welfare benefits in neutering. I mean, a bitch, for instance, won't get a pyometra, which is a potentially fatal disease of the womb. They don't get endometriosis, and they're less likely to get cancer of the breasts. The male dogs won't get testicle cancer. They won't get prostate problems. I mean, there are huge welfare benefits. And behavioural benefits. I wouldn't get testicular cancer if I cut my testicles off either, but I'm not going to do it. Well, that's right, but they don't put human babies to sleep that are not wanted, do they? I mean, we have to play God, in a sense. Which is what you're doing, isn't it? Yes, of course we're playing God, but you've got to look at the greater picture. Either we neuter animals, or hundreds of thousands of puppies and kittens are going to be put to sleep every year because nobody wants them. There aren't enough homes for them. So you either neuter animals wholesale, or you have killing wholesale, which I think is the better option. So you make it sound as if you're in the business of pest control, almost. Well, you may view it as that. We don't view it as that. So when you castrate a dog, what impact does it have on its personality? Well, I mean, a castrated dog is much easier to keep as a pet. They haven't got one thing on their mind all the time. I mean, when the children come round, they're not jumping up trying to mount their legs, they're not mounting cushions, they're not sitting at the door all the time whining because there's a bitch on heat down the street. I mean, they make much better pets. It's interesting that perhaps the, for example, castration of male dogs has coincided with the ascendancy of feminism, the idea that maybe dogs remind humans too much of what men are really like underneath it all, that they're really like presidents and foreign secretaries, and that there is a promiscuous impulse right below the surface, which one can cover up for reasons of political correctness, which is always there, and we're reminded of it by watching dogs. This whole business of neutering is still a lot of reluctance by some people that have their dog neutered. They think somehow you're depriving it of its manhood and it's entitled to its fun, and there's that whole sort of masculine macho ethic that surrounds, that's transferred to people's dogs. In practice, what happens is if you don't get your dog neutered, it's much more likely to get in fights, it's much more likely to go astray and looking for other dogs and get hit by a car. You're much more likely to survive for a decent long lifespan if you're being neutered. Might apply to people too, they haven't thought about that. Oh, just squeezing one of the testicles so we've got a nice clear place to make incision. Just cutting down into it now. Through the skin. It's nice with these staffies, they've got such big testicles. You're not hunting for them. How's his anaesthetic going? Very well, yeah. There's been a big change though in attitudes about using pain relief over the last few years. Now I think with more women in the profession there's a much more caring and more welfare aspect to what we do. The only thing I usually stress to people that have had a dog neutered is that they tend to need less food. Their energy requirement is less. So it's a good idea right from the start to start feeding a dog a bit less, maybe a third less calories each day. A neutered dog is cheaper to run. He follows me around. And he has to sit on me, he can't sit on the floor. This deceptively small Yorkshire Terrier has been a big handful and a very naughty boy. Its owner, a children's nanny, has had enough of his domination problems. So she's brought him to the celebrated dog shrink, Dr Roger Mugford, for a behavioural cure. My nun veterinary, nun to Nicolai's, told me that he's a pretty healthy dog. Very healthy. My vet, he said the only suggestion he might make where he wanted it to go through you first would be castration, that it might help. He's not over-sexed, he doesn't rape children or dolls or...? This, we hadn't. Tell me about his sex life. We had a real problem. It just happened last week. I was at a friend's house and he had this monkey that he's had since he was born and I brought it home with... Stuffed monkey. Yeah, a cuddly monkey with a big plastic dummy. When he was first brought him home he used to suck the plastic dummy. Like he was suckling something. And then afterwards it got rather... He got rather amorous. And then last week it came to a bit of a head. And he got very embarrassed. I don't know how to explain this. I've never seen this happen, but I thought what he had is what you could see and I didn't realise that something came out. And then I looked and I thought, oh, my God, something really horrible's happened to the dog. And he stood with his back arched and his tail tucked right underneath and he was just shaking. I think it really frightened him. And I didn't know what to do. I just panicked. Do you think he ejaculated? Yeah, he definitely did. And he's never done it on people, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed he doesn't. I took the monkey away now. It's in a plastic bag in the cupboard. I didn't know what to do. The monkey-loving Yorkshire Terrier was taken outside to learn some obedience. A session with the famous Dr Mugford isn't cheap. Even the Queen's been to him with her nipping corgis. It costs good money to teach the modern dog the basic survival skills that it needs in the urban jungle. These are seriously dog-savvy sheep that will stamp their feet and come up and have something to say. He's not going to get hurt, is he? The purpose of the can was to induce fear of them because obviously we don't want him to be chasing sheep. He's not met sheep before. No. Go and see my cattle. Sure. Where is he? None of these bulls have... Oh, here he is. None of these bulls... That's excellent. That's really what he's been needing. Oh, no! Don't let him eat it! It's called sheep dung. Don't! That'll balance up his gut. He's never done that before. That'll balance up his gut flora. He's only just got over gastroenteritis. This will actually make sure you'll never have gastroenteritis again because, seriously, these healthy, benign bacteria which are contained in the faeces of ruminants will actually reseed his gut with healthy, good bacteria, which he does need, OK? So you can have a little bit too much hygiene in a dog, in Wilson. He wills them. A trip to the country to eat a bit of sheep ---- is very good for him. Really. OK? Oh... Oh, he's going back to eat more! You see, I consider that a very normal behaviour in a context that you have... But why has he not eaten any faeces before? Because he doesn't come across this particular species of faeces. The joy of eating sheep droppings isn't the only outdoor pleasure that the modern dog has had to forego during its long genetic voyage away from its origins. Now, there's a proper animal. All dogs are, of course, descended from the wolf. The theory is that wolves would circle early human settlements and slowly the tamer ones would come closer and closer. And then they were ours. Since then, we've carefully ensured the survival of the unfittest by breeding them into klutzes. The wolf has a bigger brain than the dog, and where Canis familiaris never tires of rolling around on its back and having its tummy tickled by mummy, Canis lupus grows up and stops all that. It becomes an adult. Where the male dog spends its permanently puerile life looking for a shag, the wolf is largely monogamous. Is it true that the dog has a smaller brain than the wolf? That's right. It's about 20% smaller. It's an adaptive process where the brain became smaller as the world in which the dog was living in a human society required different senses, different abilities. So because we looked after them so well, dogs could afford to become stupider, really? Well, they could afford to do things differently, and therefore, in terms of adapting to their environment, yeah. So the changes that we've worked on, the skeleton of a wolf to turn it into a dog, what kind of effect would that have on the look of the animal itself? Well, in some breeds, or in some dogs, you would have seen larger eyes relative to the size of the face, a much shorter muzzle, so you're getting these sorts of features that make the dog look, I guess you could say, baby-like, like the pug or the poodle. Those sorts of features are emphasised. Here we have the very different, very angular jaw. It's a lot smaller because you can see the nasal area is much more contracted, and that can lead to breathing problems for the animal. Also, because the jaw is a lot shorter, possible eating problems. So we have a much more compact face, much more what you could call childlike. Well, that's a very, I would say, grotesque object, actually. It's very difficult to think that you got from this natural and rather noble beast to this. Yeah, well, it's a big change. That's for sure. Some people like it that way. I can't personally say that I do, because of the problems that it can cause the animal in terms of breathing, especially in this breed. We've spent tens of thousands of years breeding the wolf out of the dog, but we still haven't got them exactly how we want them. Oh, no, not by a long way. The dog is a work in progress. There's always something about it that needs changing. You cut off its testicles, you send it to a shrink, you breed its head into the shape of a deformed Halloween pumpkin, and still it won't do what you tell it to. So if you can afford it, it's time to turn to the teaching profession. OK, Pat. Let's call the dogs. Call the dogs now. I've never yet seen a proper dog. Correction, I've seen dogs with problems, but it's all ones caused by others. Honestly, when you think about it, when they come out of the womb, have they got a problem? If you put all these dogs, put them all in this room or in a field and all walk away and leave them there for six weeks or ten weeks, feed them, would there be a problem? Within the first hour, all these dogs will sort out who's the number one, who's the number two, number three, number four, number five. Mary, keep your foot on the lead. No, no, no. Candice. Oh, what's this then? Oh, good camera. That's a good camera. Sometimes the new dog learns its old tricks. Other times, however hard you try, the bloody thing just won't listen. And then the great British love of animals, of which we're so inordinately proud and for which we are so celebrated the world over, slips somehow behind the car seat and gets lost. What you have to remember is despite the fact I am wearing a uniform, I'm still a human being and I've got feelings as well. When I see deliberate cruelty cases, I try and be very professional, I get on with the job, but inside I'm very angry. But believe me, there are times when I go in my flat and go to sleep and I do shed a tear or two, that's no lie. I went to White Gates Farm, South Hanning Field, which is just outside Chelmsford. I came across a sight I hope that I never see again. It's probably one of the worst cases of cruelty and neglect I've ever come across. It was Jennifer Bosson, who was at the time a Kennel Club registered judge. She was judging dog shows all round the country. Anne was renowned for being quite clued up in her field. However, behind closed doors on her farm, we found six decomposed bodies of dogs which had died. We found ten dogs in a terrible state of emaciation, neglect. They were dirty, they had matted courts. Some of the breeds, I can honestly say, were unrecognisable. We didn't know what they were because they were just so bad. You can imagine the smell in the kennel block that we found most of the dogs in and the dead dogs. Our vet stated that the place hadn't been cleaned out for at least 12 months. So when we went in there, we weren't actually walking on concrete. We were walking on decompressed urine, hair and faeces. I've just seen nothing like it ever. Who could honestly judge dog shows, tell somebody how to look after their dog and breed specific breeds, and this is what she did in her own doorstep. This is what she did to her dogs. What's wrong with that dog? It's so matted, it can't walk properly. What's happened is all the hair has compressed. It's actually walking on hair, it's not actually walking on the pads of its feet. So it's losing control of its back end, so it can't actually walk properly. But look at the state on it. Mahatma Gandhi said a good thing. The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I don't know if that's right, but let's hope there's an escape clause. Welcome to my local park, otherwise known as the home of the turd. How can people get away with this? They wander into the park, turn their doggy loose, wait for it to defecate and then go home again. To me, it's my local park. To the great British dog owner, it's a public toilet. You hear all these stories about how dangerous this stuff is, how babies go blind from it and all that. So let's persuade the ubiquitous great British dog turd to yield some of its secrets. So Dr. Eicrop, we found these typical, we hope, examples of dog faeces and we've brought them to you. Now tell us, what have you found for us? Well, in the first sample, there's typical growth of E. coli and Proteus. In particular, if you look at the surface of that medium there, it shows the spreading growth of Proteus. That's a very common, normal inhabitant of faeces. We've also got quite a good growth of it on this medium, which we would expect to identify Salmonella on. The yellow colonies are typical of E. coli. They are not Salmonella. Salmonella colonies would in fact be black. We've got an example of one of those here, where you can see the typical black colonies of Salmonella growing on the surface of that medium. I've hit lucky. My carefully collected doggy poo isn't laden with fatal doses of Salmonella. That only leaves Toxicariasis to worry about, which affects 100 people a year in Britain and which can, indeed, blind your baby. And Alveolar Hyatid Disease, Brucellosis, Cagnola Fever or Camphylobacter, Pneumonitis, Hyatid Cyst, Lyme Disease and Tongue Worm. With over 40 illnesses in waiting to choose from, excrement of dog is a biological marvel of disease potential. Every day, 1,000 tonnes of shoe-clinging stools are deposited on the Great British Doorstep. The bacteria, the parasites, the worms and the flies have never had it so good. If I told you that you looked like a dog, I'd be insulting you. If I said you were a bitch, I'd be being rude. Lurking within the English language is a cruel and ancient ambivalence about the dog. We love our dogs, but not for themselves. We care for them in order to alter them. The older they get, the more there is to do. Right, well, I've just sorted out her pads. I'm going to do her nails, pull the hair out of her ears. Hair in her ears? Yeah. Right. And you have to take that out? If you don't take it out, it stops the airflow getting in and it can cause ear problems later in life. By the time human beings have finished pampering their pooches, the descendant of the wolf bears hardly any actual resemblance to itself. When the ninja turtles were all the rage, I dyed one green and turned it into a ninja turtle and you cut into the fur and make the patterns actually out of the fur. It's very big in the States. It's not so big over here because people actually don't like it. They think it's being cruel to the dog, but dogs don't know what they look like. They don't walk out and go, oh, look at me. And the dog gets his little five minutes of stardom and people love that. It's like putting your child on the stage. They love it. Cosmetic surgery available. Here's a good one. Artificial testicles for neutered dogs with a built-in address chip. Useful. Too old to go for the postman. Try the evil Knievel method. Dog nappies for those embarrassing last moments of incontinence before we put them to sleep. Lord God, we give thanks for the life of Sarah, so sadly taken from us. If it be your will, we pray that we may meet her again in that land beyond the skies where love lies undying and eternal. Lord God, we believe that there is a place in that happy land not far away for all living creatures. We look to meet Sarah again, for without her, our heaven can never be complete. Amen. Up to today, I felt quite traumatic. I've had to have some counselling, actually. Quite traumatic because I could see her in every room. I suppose she was in charge of me. But this has given me such peace. And I'm going to go back knowing that she's not in an old field and she's certainly not a piece of dust stuck in a casket on my shelf, which I couldn't bear. And I didn't want her in my garden because I felt that would be too much for me to cope with. And it's come very good. Yes, it is a lot of money, but there you go. I've got what I want. Old Shelby has gone. It's gone. Old Shelby. But it don't. It's hard to discern a lot of spiritual life in Sid, really. Other than in the affection that she draws from other people. So, I mean, I'll walk down the street and people will just stop and talk about her the whole time. They want to touch her, they want to hold her, they want to be with her. And so in the sense of drawing life out of others, she's brilliant. You'll see someone's face light up when they see her. So in terms of actually creating spiritual life in humans, she's very, very good. What she experiences, it's pretty very hard to tell. Because if it's not food, it's not interesting. So in terms of her soul, I'd love to ask. That's a very big question. I would find it hard that something that's been very important to a human being on earth won't be there for them, being important in heaven in some way. Because heaven is a good place. And if something has been good on earth, then that will also be there in heaven being good. I remember once somebody asking Billy Graham whether they'd beat golf in heaven. He said, well, has it made you happy on earth? He said, yes, and I suspect it will be there in heaven. I think much more profoundly that's true of animals than golf. It's very different from my usual image of heaven. Yes. I remember there was a nice little story of a little boy whose dog died. And his granny was trying to make him feel better about all this. And she said, well, don't worry, because eventually Rover has gone to be with Jesus in heaven. And the little boy looked at her and said, but what would Jesus want with a dead dog? Add a flower to a silk dress. That seems a strange name for a restaurant. Apparently, in Korean, it means something like, whatever you've tried in life, there's always something better. Hmm. It's a good philosophy. Which pieces of meat do you cook? All parts of the dog, all of the dog would be put in and would be cooked. And where do the dogs come from? In the countryside, dogs would be bred like livestock. And some would come from little villages. Some would come from households in those villages. I'm going to prepare a mixed salad with the dog meat. And our ancestors did not like using knives to cut the meat off. Rather, they would tear the meat off with their hands. God, how rude we are about the Koreans, because they eat dog. Back in our own prehistory, we would have eaten dog too. But at our end of the global kitchen, this understandable tradition has died out to be replaced by the cult of the entirely useless dog, otherwise known as the modern pet. Eating dog isn't illegal in Britain, it's merely unimaginable. And that's a far more powerful deterrent. So this is the dog soup. Rice. Mmm. It's very like a kind of boiled mutton. You can definitely taste that it's had the wildness spread out of it. And all these lovely hot spices sort of hide the taste, but they don't hide it completely. I don't think it's going to replace the Christmas turkey in my household. It's obviously very popular here, particularly amongst the older generation. Men like it. And why not? In the end, it's just another kind of meat, isn't it? Mmm. I don't think dogs go to heaven. I think the life they have with us is the only one they get. Here in Korea, infamously, they might get eaten. They might be treated with terrible cruelty, just as they sometimes are in Britain. Or they might get lucky. These are Korean rescue dogs. They've just come back from Taiwan, where they've been searching for victims of those terrible earthquakes. Now, no-one's going to send these dogs to a shrink if they're unhappy. They certainly haven't been bred to look ridiculous. And when they're old, I'm sure that no-one's going to force them to wear nappies. But at least their lives have a purpose. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the trendy vicars are right, that dogs do have a soul, and that this soul is indestructible. If I had to choose between coming back as a pampered British bulldog or a knackered Korean Alsatian, I know which one I'd go for.