…Or at least read about the possibility of doing better.
This week, I was planning to write about ‘pattern’ for the lexicon, which I began a couple of months or so ago. I’ve not said much about the lexicon to date, as I am still thinking/experimenting through its intentions, and will expand on its existence in a little while. However, I am not going to write about pattern just yet. I had to say goodbye to my little doggy, Poppy, earlier this week, so instead I am simply going to share some images and a couple of articles/podcasts I read/heard this week and which I thought valuable. They’re not primarily articles about dogs or how we relate to our pets and why their deaths can be so upsetting. They are about the world, how we live in it, and how and why to aim for better.
Poppy was a wonderfully good soul. She was just short of sixteen human years and was lucky enough not only to have lived a good life, but to have had the opportunity to do so. She was a border-terrier cross with, perhaps, a bit of Patterdale somewhere in her ‘mutty’ genes. She loved to run, eat and be cuddled. She didn’t seek unnecessary attention, and she never yapped incessantly. Almost everyone who met her adored her. I say almost everyone; squirrels and anything that resembled a squirrel would have been right to fear her. (And my ex-husband couldn’t stand her. Enough said, perhaps.) Poppy lived with my ex, kids, and me until a divorce in 2013. Raising three children alone and navigating landlord demands and tenants’ rights forced me to give Poppy to my mother. Even when we moved, the new landlord’s agent demanded an additional £2K deposit if we wanted to keep a dog or a cat. Deposit laws have changed since then, and the 2026 rent reforms have also improved things slightly; charging more for having a pet is no longer so easy for landlords, but they can still refuse permission due to some woolly legal wording. The law remains imbalanced, in the landlord’s favour in my opinion, positioning investment vehicles (accidental or otherwise) ahead of renters’ right to a proper home. The recent changes are a good thing and hard won in a country that continues to be so influenced by its long, long history of enclosure and serfdom. Despite all of that, I am grateful my mother was willing and had the means to take Poppy. Poppy continued to be cared for by all of us, although my mother took on the bulk of the responsibility and all the financial cost. And in the end, it was probably very good for Poppy, who got to live with another mutt known as Tosca, and then Florence a few years after Tosca left us. She also ended up spending much of her time in the Italian countryside, which I expect was far more exciting for a border-terrier than being in South London, lovely though it is.
Here, as promised, are some articles and podcasts that I know Poppy, if she were a human, would love you to read or listen to in her honour, in the hope of aiming for a more equitable and compassionate world. As I said, they are not about pets, but they do point to ways of thinking and being that may help us in that endeavour. If you would like something that makes the link explicit, however, I’d recommend Donna Haraway’s (2023) The Companion Species Manifesto.
If this is of interest, The Systems View of Life (Capra and Luisi, 2014) is an excellent book and a thorough introduction to systems thinking, which challenges a Western-centric view of life that isolates and separates everything we know, turning all into objects that somehow exist on their own, and which has dominated for centuries.
The 2026 Global Justice Report, just published, urges the human race to rethink its current trajectory. There is quite a good synopsis in The Guardian, although I do not like the headline implication but thoughts on the word ‘utopia’ are for another time.
Refs:
Capra, F. and Luisi, P.L. (2014) The systems view of life: a unifying vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
‘Global Justice Report: the World Inequality Lab maps a path to €5,000-a-month average incomes for all countries within +1.8°C of warming’ (2026) WID – World Inequality Database. Available at: https://wid.world/news-article/global-justice-report-the-world-inequality-lab-maps-a-path-to-e5000-a-month-average-incomes-for-all-countries-within-1-8c-of-warming/ (Accessed: 5 June 2026).
Haraway, D. (2023) The Companion Species Manifesto. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm.
Nate Hagens (2026) Why Our Planet is at 50% Capacity and How to Get it Back with Brett KenCairn | TGS 222. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvWO9U7hhSc (Accessed: 5 June 2026).
Renting with pets: the rules and what’s changing (2026) Shelter England. Available at: https://england.shelter.org.uk/professional_resources/news_and_updates/renting_with_pets_the_rules_and_whats_changing (Accessed: 5 June 2026).
Watts, J. (2026) ‘“Happiness is not just about GDP”: ambitious plan or utopia?’, The Guardian, 4 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/happiness-is-not-just-about-gdp-ambitious-plan-or-utopia (Accessed: 5 June 2026).