Black dog

Churchill's term for his depression. It makes a curious kind of sense, I suppose; but what does it imply? Not only that depression is dogged, and dark, but that depression is loyal, playful, a pack creature, that it smells and hears and touches its environment rather than seeing it, that is can be tamed and trained, that it must be exercised and (in some cases) neutered. All these things, is turns out, are true after all.