This is 's "The Blue-Flag in the Bog", scientificted. The Gods are super-evolved aliens and the scrap to save is dutiful and diligent, man's friend, dog
, genegineered to speak. Like the poem, the book is twee but not too.
In comparison with Radiant, the super-aliens are only concerned with what weak creatures do to each other, which I find more plausible both as a moral opinion and as a plot constraint. Tepper's heroine has much of the same put-upon competence as 's, though.
ISBN: 006053821X
So wrote clew in SF&F. | TrackBack