I think it's fair to say that the itinerant dogs of Oldton probably didn't use their noodles.

How could they? Dog's brains are still so hard-wired into the earth - via their noses mainly. So distracted are they by the smell of other people's shit, they can't deal with the metaphysical stuff that makes human beings so sophisticated and so unhappy.

Not for them the pointless musings about 'why am I here?' or 'what makes me happy?'. Instead it's a constant flow of 'that smells good', 'I wonder what that tastes like', 'I'm going to chase that'.

Sometimes I think our brains - our 'noodles' - are going to lead us so far away from the natural world that we'll be forced to leave it entirely behind.