A scene that makes for a mighty conflicted pooch

Our chocolate lab Aquinnah (aka Quinn), is a lover, not a fighter. But even Quinn has a short enemies' list, starting with our mailman. Then there's the animal kingdom. Quinn's hatred of squirrels is exceeded only by the fact that he detests crows. He takes no notice of other species of birds, but crows make him positively apoplectic.

Whether these bad boys of the bird world are sauntering along the sidewalk with their cocky walk, or laughing at Quinn from an overhead branch, it's clear he wants to chomp into every one of them. He sees it as his civic duty . . . taking a bite out of crime.

So you can imagine how conflicted the poor guy was when I took him for a walk through the neighborhood yesterday morning. There, in the middle of the street, was a crow . . . feasting on a dead squirrel. Quinn was at a loss. If you believe, as Quinn does, that the only good squirrel is a dead squirrel, the fact that there was now one less squirrel to torment him had to be good news. But to see a crow made happy by the demise of a squirrel? A sated crow with a tummy full of . . . squirrel meat? It was just too much for The Chocolate Man to wrap his brain around. Cognitive dissonance may be hard on humans, but it's downright impossible for dogs.