Hound pounds the keyboard

English 18th-century essayist Samuel Johnson once offered backhanded praise to women’s ability to preach the gospel, by coining a well-remembered turn of phrase: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

Contemporary readers likely find Johnson’s sentiments about women archaic, but we can at least take from his aphorism a reminder to judge our canine friends a bit generously when they try to do human things like walking upright, or, say, playing the piano. Yes, you read that right.

The web critter-content aggregator Petsami offers, without anything by way of explanation, a 34-second clip of a small dog howling and accompanying itself on a toy piano. Dogs have been known to react viscerally to music — YouTube has countless clips of pups flipping out in response to the Law & Order theme — but we seldom see them creating any.

Quality-wise, the dog’s tune won’t make anyone forget Norah Jones, but the dog’s adorable and the song is short, so on the whole some viewers might prefer it to Philip Glass.