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According to experts, the domestic dog has been with us for about 140,000 years.

An infantilised wolf - so runs the theory - the wild dog crept ever closer to primitive campfires, exchanging pitiful glances against the occasional tossed food scrap. Early man discovered that the dog had his uses: the pack kept predators away, their howling warned of intruders.

Cautious toleration gave way to intimacy. Dog joined man at fireside, even attempting to learn human speech. Wild dogs don't bark. The ones who live with humans do. Energetically.

That annoying noise from the foot of the bed at daybreak is really your friend trying to say, 'Hey, you, sleepyhead! Get up and take me outside! I need to use the facilities.'

The noble dog, so romantics would have us believe, is a domesticated creature in name only. Secretly, he longs to run wild with the pack, to join in the communal baying at the moon, to scent fresh prey on the night winds...inside, his canine soul responds to the Call of the Wild.

Jack London never met Ariel, the Wonder Shih-Tzu.

Dogs have been domesticated for 140 millennia. During the last one, some genius - a Chinese eunuch, according to legend - invented the Shih Tzu. The 'lion dog', the Lion of the Buddha, the 'Chrysanthemum Cloud'...bred to adorn an emperor's palace, bred to be combed, cosseted, and carried around on silken pillows (really). Bred to be cute, cuddly, and basically ornamental rather than useful.

My dog Ariel knows this. He knows this as surely as a border collie knows that it was born to herd, even though it has never smelled a sheep.

The fact that his feckless owner does not possess even one lousy silken pillow does not deter Ariel in the least in his search for his birthright - a life of meaningful social involvement with his near-peers, the ones with opposable thumbs.

On the 'protective' scale, Ariel's breed scores lower than any other. An Alsatian, for instance, will react to danger by standing in front of his master and growling fiercely, ready to take on all comers. Ariel, on the other hand, will scrabble at your trouser leg, begging - nay, demanding - , 'Pick me up! Protect your most precious asset! NOW!'

You comply, of course, finding yourself facing a potential hairy situation. your arms laden with 16 pounds of silky (smug) pet.

His best trick, when standing on the vet's examining table, is to back up against you until you reflexively put your arm around him, then pick up all four legs simultaneously, until you find yourself holding him - safe, sound, and - yes - smug, observing the threat from a satisfactory vantage point.

Ariel was born in the rolling hills of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, nurtured by his pedigreed mother and a no-doubt bemused Amish farmer and his wife. True to the rules of the American Kennel Club, his parents were registered with exotic titles - as long as those of a Gascon nobleman - in which the word 'Hershey' featured prominently. The chocolate town is located in the heart of Amish Shih-Tzu country.

We never registered Ariel - he's not show-worthy, as his nose is an unacceptable shade of brown, and he has been, I blush to say, interfered with. This decision on my part was based on the fact that giving up progeny extends one's life expectancy (as a dog, at any rate).

Nonetheless, we privately refer to our aristocrat-in-residence as 'Prince Hershey of Kiss'. The name suits him. He will kiss you at the drop of a hat - or keys, or a piece of paper, anything that brings your face within smooching range.

Ariel has grown up in the city, though, and is savvy about traffic lights, other dogs, cats, kittens to be found in bushes, squirrels to quarrel with, early morning garbage pickup, the ways of postmen (they approach, you bark, they go away, see, it works), and motorised vehicles of all shapes and sizes. He would seem to have internalised the unofficial Philadelphia attitude of cave naturam.

Witness, then, his confusion at his current location - a cabin in the Appalachian woods¹, two miles from the nearest town, down (and up, and down again) a dirt road that stirs up dust as you travel it.

Surrounded by woods. Off the chart. The only sounds the buzzing of bumblebees, the barking of distant dogs, birdsong, the occasional gunshot - which sounds familiar, but doesn't cause the others to reach for the phone and 911...Ariel is not sure what to make of all this. He thought we were going on holiday Where is the motel? Where is room service?

My dad had said, 'Watch that little dog of yours. He won't know what to do if he runs across a copperhead. He'd just wag his tail at it.' True. Fortunately, Prince Hersey is not the rambling sort, and sticks close. The greatest concern is making sure his plumy tail stays out of the way of the rocker under which he is hiding between my feet.

A dog must walk, however. At least twice a day. Places to go, things to sniff at...

A foreign student of mine once wrote of the philosopher Rousseau's rambles in the French woods: 'Every day, after lunch, nature would call Rousseau. And Rousseau would answer the call of nature.' Thus it is with Ariel.

At first he was puzzled. Where are the sidewalks, the urban canine's lavatory? Ariel refuses to 'go' on grass, which he apparently considers sacred. On a recent walk, I followed him and Elektra and discovered how Ariel - child of nature by birth, sophisticated urbanite by circumstance - coped with the problem. Straining at the leash, he doggedly hauled his human friend along the path beside the neighbouring cabin, up the hill...

...to the gravel, where, in the exact middle of the deserted road, he calmly conducted his business.

Ariel hasn't read Bertholt Brecht (isn't he lucky?), but he would understand the moral of Brecht's Naysayer - to rethink each new situation.

Or, as Ariel thinks: 'What's a little outdoors between friends? The barbecue is fine.'

We can learn a lot from our dogs.