The background to my hasty intervention (which I am already beginning to regret) is, of course, Margaret Thatcher's famous aphorism: 'There's no such thing as society'; one of those self-evident propositions like Milton Friedman's (was it he?) 'There's no free lunch'. Further back in the intellectual tradition to which Lady Thatcher belongs, is a passage with which historians of economic thought will be familiar: 'although we speak of communities as of sentient beings; although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests and passions; nothing really exists or feels but individuals. The happiness of a people is made up of the happiness of single persons. . .' (William Paley, Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), chap XI.). Individual football players 'really exist', and they have 'desires, interests and passions' that may be gratified by the victory of their team over another. The team does not 'really exist', which is why I called it an abstraction. Useful, but dangerous when used anthropomorphically. If, in order to make my (Paley's) point I have to concede 'rationality' to dogs, so be it. What I do not want to do is to ascribe it to the pack. Anthony Waterman