with apologies to W.B. Yeats, who maybe had dogs and would understand

Turning and turning in the widening path
The lurcher cannot hear the owner;
Walks fall apart; patience cannot hold;
Dog anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The off-lead time is lost, and everywhere
The ceremony of exercise is doomed;
The beast lacks all conviction, while the owner
Is full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Stanley’s never coming back goddamn.
Coming back! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of It’s Me or the Dog
Troubles my sight: somewhere there in acres of forest
A shape with lurcher’s body and the head of a mop,
A gaze blank and witless as a sheep
Is moving its arthritic thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant forest squirrels.
The clapping starts again: but now he knows
That ten years of patient training
Were vexed to nightmare by a cloddish head,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last
Slouches towards baffled Jim to be warned