Mabel Babble: Mabel the dog’s Candid Account of life in the South West of France.

In this book, a dog takes her time to survey her home and its inhabitants. She discovers a causal sequence between the humans and animals in her world. In a world that is too busy, a dog takes her time to remind her fellow humans of what is happening around them. She sits quietly in a countryside setting, with the sun on her back, on a small farm in the South West of France. She notices the interdependence between herself and the other animals and their pertinent humans. Sometimes there is a balance, sometimes it amounts to abuse. Her reflections are mostly about Europeans, who have fallen into a conglomeration of daily life in a rural setting. Their circumstances reflect any cosmopolitan environment in the twenty first century, yet their daily life is remarkably pastoral. Homo-sapiens influence their environment with the culture, religion, history and psychology that they pack with them and carry through their pilgrimage in life. The animals at their sides are the porters of their burdens. Mabel, our storyteller, remarks on the spiritual, emotional and physical interaction of the characters in the book. Her remarks are a matter-of -fact collection of tales that impact on her animal family in circumstance which are as much joyful as they are sorrowful. The stories that arise are those played out as a result of the impact of the life events on the existence of a haphazard collection of dogs, cats, hens and horses. The stage on which these adventures unfold, are the vineyards, the rolling hills and valleys of Gascony and the pathways of the Pyrenees. The effects of the human hand by war or in peace, with gentle care or harsh execution, carve out their home in this backwater.