‘Understanding’ was a reminder that, despite their efforts to live as dogs, they were no longer normal.”Īlexis makes great use of what French writer François Caradec called “Poems for Dogs,” poetry that is meant to bear significance to both humans and dogs by concealing a dog’s name within a verse. ‘understanding’ reeking as it did of thought, was the last thing they wanted. Meanwhile, Frick and Frack, two Labrador retrievers who were also littermates, have little tolerance for their newfound acumen: “. Atticus, described as an “imposing Neapolitan Mastiff” quickly secures himself the leadership role and this unnerves Majnoun, a black poodle who doesn’t want to be in charge, but cannot bring himself to trust other dogs. In the same way that intelligence is not spread equally among humans, each dog’s intellect is limited by breed and experience. Human awareness doesn’t lend well to canine pack mentality because it engenders independence and a notion of self-importance among the dogs: “a pack needed unity, and unity meant that all understood the world in the same way or, if not the world, the rules at least.” A pack also needed a hierarchy, but one where every dog knows its place. This new knowledge quickly becomes an alienating force. The dogs previously communicated in a manner that was “stripped to its essence, a language in which what mattered was social standing and physical need.” But the ability to form abstract thoughts necessitates the creation of a new language, one that can impart the growing complexity of their existence. Not long after being granted human consciousness, twelve of the dogs escape the clinic and attempt to survive without “masters,” roaming the city’s lakeshore before settling in a pocket of High Park. Out of convenience, this supernatural social experiment is conducted on fifteen dogs, who happen to be spending the night at a veterinary clinic near the Wheat Sheaf Tavern in Toronto, where the gods have spent a debaucherous night being worshipped. ‘I’ll wager a year’s servitude,’ said Apollo, ‘that animals - any animal you choose - would be even more unhappy than humans are, if they had human intelligence.’”įor Hermes to win, at least one of the animals must be happy at the end of his or her life.

It all begins with a bet between two immortal gods, Apollo and Hermes: “‘I wonder,’ said Hermes, ‘what it would be like if animals had human intelligence.’. Yet this story endeavours to delve even deeper by examining what German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once called humanity’s greatest conceit: our ability to invent knowledge. Like his previous book, Pastoral, which explores a Catholic priest’s crisis of faith, Fifteen Dogs is teeming with existential reflections. André Alexis’s new novella is an allegorical take on the value and detriment of human consciousness.

15 dogs andre alexis