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Among my youthful studies, I remember being admonished to avoid anthropomorphizing critters of the animal world. (Science teachers are paid more to use the long word than are folks who simply say it’s just a dog. Either way, they’re both wrong.
Bowie the dog-person proves the point. His anatomy is similar to a human. He, like me, is equipped with a nose, eyes, lungs, liver and legs. His core internal organs perform the same functions as their counterparts in my body, which is their own cause for wonderment.
Fish, birds, mammals and people have mostly the same off-the-shelf parts, though some have been modified to suit the requirements of their individual species.
We both are equipped with a tongue that can detect flavors and, to some degree, shapes. His can instantly search out a tiny pill among two cups of dog food kibbles. He also can separate the pill from a glob of peanut butter, and even the disquise of Milk Bone Pill Pockets —little pieces of putty-like dog candy with a hole into which one inserts the pill. The latter worked for quite a while, the canine eagerly gulping them down until one evening, he accidentally tongued a pill lose from the pocket.
He placed the pill on the floor, glared at me with canine disdain, and ever since has tongued the pill from the pocket, and gulped the disguise. I tried pouring meat fat on his food and mixing in the pill; I think I got away with that once. My latest trick is to make a sandwich of the pill and small squares of American cheese. So far he’s accepted the subterfuge twice, but he has a magic tongue.
His tongue is not his only magic. When we walk in the forest, I must rely on an electronic appendage to locate places I have been, or I must follow my previous path until I locate the thing I wish to revisit. Bowie, on the other hand, seems to be equipped with a built-in GPS. Having found something interesting, and then been removed from the scene by the impatient human to whom he is attached, he can return to the exact spot by some completely different route.
We humans like to think we are special, and we are, though not more special than other critters with whom we share our domain. Horses and geese may not understand a “camera” but I have seen them clearly understand there is attention being paid and maneuver to become the center of it.
I have taken to talking to the boy like a human son. He clearly knows when he is the subject of human conversation. And come the evening, he hugs and snuggles and deliberately blocks my view of the television or whichever human I am trying to talk with.
I always understood from the look on my grandfather’s face whether I had done well or was about to err, or already had. I wonder whether maybe dogs within eyesight might have commented to each other how like a canine I was.
I have seen expressions of love and awareness of “other” that defy mere logic. In in one of my previous lives, my partner and I returned home one frigid winter night to find our fire had gone out in our cabin in the woods. Inside, the place was cold. As I set about stoking the heat, it occurred to me the canaries were exceptionally quiet where we had left them in a covered cage.
I pulled back the cover and found the two birds lying at the bottom, snuggled close against each other, his right wing over her body in a final act of love.
That was the last of our keeping caged birds, and the beginning of my understanding that the air we breathe is not the only commonality we share with our fellow inhabitants on this cruise through the cosmos.
When I pick up his leash, Bowie becomes excited. It means we are going out.
But the leash is clearly not what he craves. He deliberately tries to snag it on a piece of brush, and then slip it over his head. Or he tries to bite it. Either way, what is clear is his wish to be outside, but not leashed.
I know how he feels. I have been tugging on other people’s leashes for nearly 80 years, often with similar results. There are so many ways we all are alike. But hope springs eternal.
Happy New Year.
Text and Images ©2024 John Messeder. John is an award-winning environmental storyteller, nemophilist and social anthropologist living in Gettysburg, PA. He may be contacted at john@johnmesseder.com