Have a Little Faith...

09/22/2006 I am reminded of a excerpt written by Donald McCaig out of his book "Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men". It is about a dog named Sirrah and a conversation Mr. McCaig conducted with the dog from a dream-state many years after Sirrah's death. I took away from the story a confirmation of my profound belief in the cognizance of dogs and a disturbing realization that that particular conversation is relevent to me, to anyone who has owned and disappointed a dog. I often wonder what such a conversation would reveal with one of my own dogs. Would they think me unfair? Would they languish in their respect and admiration of me? One thing I am certain of is their attention to me. Do they do it because I am a super owner? No, I think it is the dogs' nature to throw his lot in with man (or Woman) and accept that which they cannot change. I don't know about having the wisdom to know the difference, but I can attest to to memory of a grand gun dog who 'quit' on her drunken handler in such obvious disgust of his careless blunders afield she refused to work for him again. He sold her, as opposed to shooting her which at the time would not have been uncommon. She lived to teach me how to aim true and enjoy the communion of her silent companionship. She was a marvelous teacher in patience and we remained a team until her disappearance in 1979 under 'mysterious' circumstances. Her name was Catt and although no liturgies will be written over either her life or her passing, she had much to teach in the way of humility. I have no such misgivings with my son. He is human after all and young enough to not have developed the dubious talent of disguising his emotions. With him it is never a guess, he either is or isn't angry. He either is or isn't sad. What makes dogs special is the degree of observational skills one develops in close communication with them. An art certainly lost as our dependency on dogs to help us in our daily work or to assist in the deliverance from starvation passes with the advances in medicine, agriculture and technology. The machinations of the human animal have diverted our attentions from our natural world, the world of our ancestors and we as a species suffer from an acute sort of blindness as a result. As Mr. McCaig suggests, amongst other minds far greater than my own; dogs literally helped us to evolve to the state of mind and technical prowess that we currently enjoy. Without their uncanny and timely assistance, we may not necessarily have perished as a species, but their presence at our early hearths warned us of danger, either by their abrupt disappearance from our fires, or the warnings they provided in their defense of these resources. On the hunt, we followed the packs, emulated their ways and thrived. How do we repay them? We don't acknowledge their contributions to our successful survival, we control and manipulate them from their 'natural' state into something that looks like a parody of itself. We try to legislate them out of existence with our Breed Specific Legislation and other insidious Anti-Dog laws. We restrict their access to places under the guise of health ordinances or the risk of liability and we shun them to dark places we know exist but are not willing to acknowledge let alone change. This country executes dogs by the millions each year because they have lost their importance. They have either become the ultimate display of discretionary income with Dog Show Pagentry and as Mr. McCaig suggests, Victorian excess, or they have become the new Ford Model T. The first disposable car. People churn out puppies without a care past the dollars they line their pockets with. No value is placed on their appropriate placement, no value placed on their ability to contribute in a meaningful way.