With the the increase effect of climate change slowly heating up the Earth I think it’s important for all of us to do the right thing for the environment. In the past it was simple stuff like recycling and not setting fire to old car tyres in your back yard to annoy your neighbours. However due to the obvious increasing changes to the weather throughout the world we all need to do more to stop the increasing sea levels, drought and food shortages.I’ve read on the internet that owning a dog produces more greenhouse gasses than owning a 4WD vehicle. I find this difficult to believe as most dogs I know don’t drive cars so maybe this fun internet fact is incorrect. The answer doesn’t actually matter for our dog, he has a dislike for all environmental issues.

He’s an inside dog, he sleeps and eats inside and spends the majority of his time inside the house. I suppose that because he’s not involved in outside life very much he doesn’t appreciate the beauty that the natural environment has to offer. I understand the reality of this, but what I don’t get is the extreme hatred he seems to have for anything natural.

I cannot deduce his reasoning for this hatred. I’m not aware of any strong political views he has for the destruction of the natural environment and I doubt he’s received calls from lobbying groups trying to politically influence him to turn a blind eye to destruction of our backyard. In a perverse way I’d actually be happy to know that his choices were done for reasons other than pure evil destruction. Maybe political campaign contributions that someone is giving him so he can lobby us for the removal of our cats from the household? Or he’s after funding for the purchase of more dog food as we are so rude we only feed him twice a day? I’d be ok with that, but he is hell-bent on obliterating any living plant in our backyard for no obvious reason.

He has a special hatred for ferns.

I’m not sure why he hates them so much. We have a couple of ferns sitting in the back yard (Leptosporangiate Ferns for those playing at home) and for some unexplained reason he does not like them. It didn’t take him long to rip off the fronds from the ferns and parade their severed limbs around the backyard like a terrifying trophy, but in the end that wasn’t good enough for him. After a few days a new frond would peak out from the trunk of the plant, unrolling as it gets bigger. This was a mistake on the ferns behalf as it was a new target of destruction that was mocking Storm with its greenness

After a few failed attempts at trying to grow new growth the fern finally decided that enough was enough and just stopped trying. Personally I don’t blame it, anybody could tell it was a wasted effort as Storm would just bite off and new growth and leave the it sitting on the ground as the plant looked on horrified and disappointed.

I finally admitted defeat and stopped on the way home from work one day and picked up a new fern,from the nursery. It looked healthy and happy. On the way home in the car I told the fern about its new house as where it would be living and how nice the other plants were.

I didn’t mention the dog.

It soon found out, I don’t think I need to tell you how it ended up

I replanted the old fern down the back of the garden in the hope it would try once more to grow without the disruption of Storm but in a final show of blatant disrespect and sheer evilness Storm ripped the entire plant out of the ground and ran around in huge circles in the backyard with the the severed plant in his mouth.

He looked proud of his achievement, in his mind he has protected us from the evils of nature, but I think it’s time we told him The Day the Triffids was just a movie and not a documentary about homicidial plants.

The odd thing about our Golden Retriever’s right wing views on environmental issues is that in his unique way he sometimes wants to do the right thing. He enjoys his reality but sometimes wants to create new life. Only he likes to do things differently. You might think he sees a sexy female Golden Retriever and thinks some “special cuddles” are in order, but that is the last thing on his mind. He want to create the first ever dog-pillow hybrid. He drags the pillow from his crate, and scurries to the backyard. I won’t say what he does to it, but let’s just say he comes back with a smile on his face, a disrespected pillow and the immediate need for a nap.After this assault is finished the pillow needs washing, and the ferns are disturbed by what they’ve witnessed, but also grateful it was not the object of Storm’s affection.