According to the haphazard logic of Conan Doyle, the dog that doesn’t bark is supposed to tell you something. Sir Arthur’s glittering career could probably tell you a lot, were you attentive, about the kinds of creature a Scot on the make can wind up becoming in a foreign capital.

            My dog, being a lazy hound, just barks in a routine way. Sometimes he says, “I think that might be trouble. Better have a look”. Mine is not a stupid dog. He is not often wrong.

            Everyone chases the noise, the racket. Everyone follows the argument they think they understand. Everyone, furthermore, ends up chasing the heady stench of the argument placed beneath their noses. That’s not wise, necessarily.

            Two of the grand distractions are called “Scotland” and “England”. No one involved with real power gives a crap about either. If they mean to prevent a northern fragment from asserting a democratic right over the southern part, that is simply because money is at stake.

            They’ll give all the good dogs a feint and a lure, though, with tales of hatred, treaties, coinage and grannies seized by border patrols. Reason it through. It’s just offal for the hounds, chum chucked in the water, a means to prevent debate. The intention is to stop thought.

            Meanwhile, my dog is barking his head off.

            He says that the mistake is to be taken in by those “Blow for the SNP” drolleries. They are meant – and, my, how well they succeed – to drag you into a muddy dogfight. My mutt invites you to wonder what is going on in the meantime in your country.

            A game rigged before it even begins. Notice, for example, how no point offered has anything to do with the point at hand while they talk currency theory. For example: who has legal title over Scotland’s assets?

            Some nights, when the wind is up, my dog just prowls the house, looking for trouble.   

It feels like exactly the wrong moment to be starting this again. On the other hand, that poor, forlorn dug in the picture has probably been left on his golden beach for long enough. If he stares seawards for much longer, something fishy is liable to wash up.

            Let me tell you about me and him. I didn’t give the animal a name. The person who knows more about art than me saw a tiny head in a cardboard box on a cold day and decided that this was Echo. His vote arrived about five seconds later, along with an ability to put a physical lump into your life, furniture, attention, wages, bedclothes and spine.

            He’s a gregarious, haphazard, clumsy and loving animal. He’s a metaphor waiting to happen. He doesn’t know how to fight. When his hackles come up, Echo is a bit baffled about where they came from. But he doesn’t care to be pushed around, or to have his good nature abused. He’s ashamed of himself when he’s been in a fight. Echo wants to like other creatures.

            Yesterday, he took me for a walk. God knows, I needed it. Echo has a trick for knowing what you need, sometimes, and a shake of the head when you reach a spot, far above the glittering fields and the endless sea, of filling his lungs and emptying out. “Fuck it,” he says. “What else is necessary?”

            For me, I want a land fit for affectionate dogs that mean no harm. Just a patch of the planet where no one is picking stupid fights that force my dusty, forgotten hackles to rise. It’s not too much to ask, is it?

            Just to be left alone to walk my dog in a society that does no deliberate hurt to anyone, or anything, to any child or any hope. When did that become improbable? I am not some part-time Coriolanus. I don’t want the fight. But don’t keep on poking me with that stick.

            The dug and me differ in two respects. He’s never had to wonder why a fight could matter. For him, the sun and the rain and the fields will always be there tomorrow. He doesn’t imagine that his few acres could even deserve a struggle.

            My sweet Echo wasn’t raised in a scheme. He would throw down his existence for what he loves. But he doesn’t know how to answer when the world gets serious. So here’s that metaphor: my poor, trusting, affectionate and gentle country doesn’t know what all we bad dogs from the schemes always knew.

            Bring it.