Dogs: shallow or profound?

It feels shallow, given the human condition, to write about dogs. I'm talking about war, terrorism, poverty, famine, Healthcare, the collapsting environment, the global child sex trade, the oppression of women in developing countries, (see "Half The Sky" by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn).

Apparently, one in two children in the U.S. goes hungry everyday.

Dogs feel as if they're a luxury. Mine fill me with guilt. Everytime I go into a pet store and see the array of toys and clothes and food and beds for dogs, I think of a hungry child. Everytime I go to the vet for one of my three dogs and pay what seems always to be an enormous bill, I think of someone without health insurance. Can we really afford dogs given the suffering all around us? Shouldn't our money go to help humans?

But then I think of human need, the homeless people begging with their dogs. Sure, a dog is a "draw" for more coins. But I also think a dog provides some refuge in an otherwise empty existence. A dog is home.

Dogs aren't only for rich people.

The human spirit craves love; has a limitless capacity to love. A dog helps fill that craving but requires something in return. That's part of their virtue. It's in loving a dog that your spirit is enhanced. Because you can't just love a dog; you have to contribute to his/her life. You have to keep him/her comfortable and vital. A dog takes you out of our self-preoccupation. For a short time, anyway, a dog banishes world weariness by beckoning you to pay attention. Not in the way children do. Children are "of you." Dogs are separate but actually, almost as needy. In fact, a dog can drive you crazy with demands. So much so that you can think, "I don't love you." You don't dare think that about your child.

But even if you feel as if you don't love your dog, your dog loves you. "A dog would never say, "I hate you, mummy!" A dog loves you no matter how you treat him/her. He/she keeps on trusting. That's what's so painful about abused dogs. Even if they're fierce dogs, dogs who have wounded, you can see that look of love and longing in their eyes. "I'll give to you. Please give to me."

Dogs are not numinous in the way that whales or elephants or tigers are. Dogs are grounded, like humans, in essential dailiness, in the productivity of survival. Dogs are capitalists. They produce energy, well-being, loyalty, compassion, playfulness. Some are scientists, some detectives, others are agriculturalists, therapists. They use aspects of their world to gain, like the entrepreneurs they are. And if this is recognized, they are rewarded well. That's how they engender wealth.

Not that you think about all this when your dog licks your face at 6:30 am on a November day lashing with rain. Not that you think about this when he/she eats your Blackberry, chews your bra. Not that you think about it when the vet bill is $300. for unknown-cause diarrhoea and you've got to pay another $45. for prescription food. Or when he/she slobbers on your white couch.

You don't think about it at the dog park where your dog gets to rough-house and run and you get to meet interesting people. You don't think about it when he/she leaps into the air and catches the frisbee, (or ball or kong or stuffed squirrel.) Or when he/she makes you laugh. Or when he/she jerks heavily against you in sleep. Or even when you get the look, the one where the head tilts, the eyebrows twitch and the eyes invade and make your heart burst.

Why does your heart burst? Because the head says this is a creature who can entertain, help, heal, hug, earn. This is a creature who is, when you get right down to it, out for him/herself, the way you have to be, but who does so with a return so powerful, it undoes for a time, all life's terrible realities.

If entities acquire profundity with time and dogs have been companions and workers for millenia, then dogs are profound.











Dogs aren't numinous like whales or elephants or tigers. Dogs are grounded lthe same way we are in essential dailiness, the productivity of survival.