'We All Know.....

      ....that respect for order is an excellent thing, and that this is even more important in times of revolution than it is in periods of stability; but the Ancsas were of the opnion that it was completely unneccessary to abuse anyone's obedience, whether man or beast, even in the name of order. Nikki [their dog], then, never had to complain of encroachments on her field of independence by a master or mistress drunk on power. Her little ways and habits were never to be disturbed or upset for a caprice, or malice. There could, of course, be no question of bad faith in the small family she had joined, and it rarely, perhaps never, happened that her master or mistress imposed an obligation on her carelessly, or out of intelectual laziness, an oblibation, that is not justified by the interests of their little company. The abuse of power, baleful vice of kings, leaders, dictators, directors, heads of departments, shepherds, cowherds and swineherds, heads of families, pedagogues, elder brothers, of old and young in what authority so-ever, this stench, this sickness, this source of infection, peculiar to man and unknown to any other carnivore, even the bloodiest, this curse and blasphemy, this war and cholera, was a thing unknown in the Ancsas' house. No pointless constraint was placed on Nicki's freedom. And the gentle disciplinary limitations which were, by tactful initiation and in the interests of the community, imposed on it, were understandable, transparent, open at every point to the spacious world of intelligble necessity'

 - a page from the 1956 novel 'Niki The Story Of A Dog' by the Hungarian poet and author Tibor Dery.

  Read a 2018 review of the novella here.