Dogs love company. They place it first on their short list of needs.

[If] you are ready enough to pull my knitting to pieces, but provide none of your own, the only sock is a sock in the jaw!

I realized clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.